My Philosophy of Running

Someone asked a fairly straightforward question:  How do I improve my run speed?
Great question, one that gets asked a lot, and so I wrote up a response.  For anyone looking for something that has workouts, or paces, or structure to follow, you will be sorely disappointed.  However, the following is pretty much how I see things when it comes to improving your running (whatever that might mean to you).

The best practice for improving your running speed is this:

Run lots, mostly easy, sometimes hard.

There are four keys to running:
- Frequency
- Consistency
- Volume
- Intensity

Frequency:
You need to run often to get better at running. It is just like any other skill that you are trying to improve; the more often you practice, the better your body and mind will develop the necessary adaptations to improve.

Consistency:
This is tied to frequency, but goes beyond just running as often as possible. You have to follow this pattern for a long time to really get to your best. In other words, there's a reason why most of the elite runners are in their 30s, and why the 30-50+ age groups can be some of the most competitive at a race. These are the people who have years of consistent running behind them.

Volume:
In order to improve as a distance athlete, you need to improve your endurance. Endurance is developed by running many miles at a time. Volume can be measured in weeks, months, and years. There's a reason why the best runners, regardless of race distance, generally follow similar mileage amounts.

Intensity:
Simply put, intensity is how hard you run. There are various ways to measure intensity, namely Heart Rate (HR), Pace, and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE).

How These Keys Relate:

All of these keys work in conjunction with each other, so you need to be aware of the interplay between them all.

Volume and Intensity are the most conjoined, and often the hardest to really manage well, especially for someone starting out. In order to build your body's adaptations for running more miles, you need to give it time to recover. Recovery is affected by how hard and how long you run: the harder you run and the longer you run at that intensity, the longer it takes to fully recover from the effort, and the longer it takes to build those adaptations. Additionally, by putting too much stress on the body for extended periods of time without adequate periods of recovery and adaptation between them, your body will eventually break down; it simply cannot keep up with the repairs it needs to do.

So, that means that there are always going to be limits on how much and how hard you run. However, those limits are constantly moving, due to those adaptations. When starting out, a person may not be able to run 1 mile, but after a period of time, he can run that mile with no problem, and eventually even starts to run it faster. These are the adaptations at work.

Now, as with every other skill, there is only so much running "practice" the body can absorb at a time (which is basically the effects listed above). So, how to increase the rate of adaptation? By running shorter, easier runs at a high rate of frequency. By running lots of shorter runs at an easier effort, the recovery time is minimal, and can allow a person to get in more runs in a period of time because less time is spent trying to recover from previous efforts. By maintaining this pattern consistently over a period of months and years, the changes can be remarkable, and have been demonstrated on this site and others.

The Role of Specific Workouts:
The above does not address race-specific workouts that a person should do. There needs to be runs of varying lengths and intensities to fully realize one's ability at a given point in time. In other words, you shouldn't just run 2 miles at an easy pace and expect to run a sub-3 marathon. In order to really improve, additional workouts need to be integrated into the weeks and months to further develop specific adaptations to maximize race ability.

Putting it all together:
At this point, we are now talking about more training plan - specific topics, namely how one should mix things up in a given week or month. I will not give exact times, distances, efforts, or even a schedule; those things are entirely based on the individual.

In order to really improve, you need to run short, run long, run hard, and run easy. None of these types of workouts should be completely ignored, but they do need to be managed properly to allow the body to fully develop and adapt to the training. So, from this, here are some general rules of thumb:

- The longest run in a given period of time should not exceed approximately 1/3 of total miles within that period. This time period is best measured by going from long run to long run.

- The day after a harder effort should almost always be an easy effort.  The body needs time to recover, but you need to keep running, so be sure to make it light, and not too long.

- The only "junk miles" are those miles that are done with either no purpose, or are counter to the proposed purpose of the workout. In other words, if today should be an easy day, don't go out and turn it into a harder effort; you've counteracted the purpose of the workout.

- Be critically honest, and realistic, with yourself. The biggest offense people make is convincing themselves that a run was "easy", when the reality is that it was not. Some of this is due to lack of really understanding the body, but a big part of it is simply looking in the wrong place for the indicators, and not being realistic and honest about where they are in training and their fitness.

- You have to mix it up. Don't run the same pace or effort or heart rate all the time; at least once a week, go out and see how you feel and let things roll. Unleash the hidden runner inside, the one that craves the wind in the face and the feel of burning legs and lungs, the sensation of flying over the ground. The experience is fun, it's educational, and it provides a respite from the monotony of training.

- Focus on your body. Keep track of your breathing, and how you feel. You want to always try to run relaxed, feeling loose and fluid and smooth. Breathing is a good way to monitor effort; find a consistent pattern and try to stick with it for a while and see how you feel. If it's too hard, then ease back and find a new pattern. Listen to your feet and the sound they make. You want soft thuds, not loud slaps or scuffs or thuds. Focus on trying to have "quiet" feet. Learn the signals your body is sending out, like aches, pains, burning sensations, whatever. These are warning signs, and you need to know what they are, what they signify, and how to deal with them.

That's really all there is to it. Remember, this is running, not rocket science. Everyone is different, so exact workouts and effort levels and mixes of training won't work for all. There are few universal truths when it comes to training, and we are each an experiment of one. However, I do believe that there are some universal truths, and I have attempted to outline what I believe them to be.

Hope this helps.