First let's start with the reverse taper. If you followed my training for Rocket City, you understand the grueling miles that I put in to train for 26.2 miles. But the 3 weeks leading into my race included what is known as the taper (or a slow reduction in miles for my body to best adapt to the training and peak at just the right time before my race. My muscles needed rest and recovery so my body was performing at it's highest capacity right at race time, but in a way not to loose any aerobic fitness. Well once the race is over, I needed even more rest. 26.2 miles at race pace causes the body to go into trauma. It needs to recover before I can continue back into training again. The reverse taper is a way to provide that rest and slowly bring my body back into training mode. The week following RCM I did not perform any running workouts. Well, OK I did one slow run with my Panera Pounders 5 days later. A brisk walk is a suitable recovery workout during this first week. Muscular damage from a marathon takes at least 2 and upwards to 3 weeks before it fully heals. The importance of taking it east and allowing the body to get the recovery it needs is very important. Getting back into training too soon after a major race can lead to overuse injury. Your body may start to feel good even after the first week of rest, but the body is still healing. Week 2 meant more easy runs but short in duration, light weekly mileage, and more rest days than normal. Week 3 for me meant it was time to start returning to normal, but still being cautious. Keeping the pace easy and the duration shorter than normal training. Weekly mileage is starting to build, but still lower than normal.
Now I am entering week 4 it is time to get back into full swing with training. But the focus is specific. Base building. What does this term mean?
Training has been described as a pyramid. Many different facets of fitness will make up your overall level of performance with different priorities given depending how important that particular facet will play in your overall performance. Turnover rate (how fast you can move your feet from a neurological point of view) can influence how well you do in a long distance race but in a very small degree compared to the body's ability to clear lactate. Turnover may be the tip of the pyramid while lactate clearance more towards the bottom of the pyramid. The base of your pyramid is aerobic capability. All distance running for races that take more than 90 seconds to race will all have one thing in common that will make or break your finishing time. How well you can deliver oxygen to your running muscles, and how well those muscles can use that oxygen. Because of this importance, most of training will focus on improving this. Lactate clearance and training your body to burn fat as fuel is also very important, but before you are able to train efficiently to improve those areas, you must first have a good aerobic base. Otherwise, you will reach a plateau in your performance. No matter how hard you train, you will never seem to make it past a certain level of performance without a good aerobic base.
There is a myth that says, if you want to run faster, you must train faster. Nothing could be further than the truth. Studies have shown that longer runs at an easy pace (60-65% of your maximum heart rate) or what we call a conversational pace will significantly improve the strength of your heart and stress the body into making big aerobic gains. It's the longer (or more miles) you run in this easy range that provides the biggest improvements in aerobic capability, not faster you run.
So base building is not only a very important facet of running performance, but so important it becomes the base to other forms of training. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced elite, it starts was a good aerobic base. Even elite runners when their race season ends, they will always enter into their new season of training by first establishing a good aerobic base.
It all started with an New Zealand coach, Arthur Lydiard, who in the 1950's and 60's coached several Olympic athletes. Lydiard himself won the New Zealand national marathon title in 1953 and 1955 and placed 13th at the Auckland Empire Games in 1950. Lydiard's athletes whom he coached won a total of 6 medals in the 1960 Rome Olympics and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. This included Peter Snell who broke the world 800-m, half-mile and mile records in one week in 1962. Arthur Lydiard is regarded as the father of modern long distance training and was regarded by Runner's World as the greatest running coach of all time. 2 major contributions to modern day training include periodization and base building. Lydiard's training first started by breaking down the season into smaller training periods where 8-16 weeks were first dedicated to base building, then moving upward into the pyramid to focus on other facets of training. The final weeks before a major race were dedicated to race specific workouts to fine tune the tip of the pyramid where finally taper and racing.
There you have it. I hope you enjoyed this little training blog. I leave you with a few more videos.
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