Summer Practice Reminder

There seems to be some confusion about practice dates....many absent today.

Please see the Summer Practice Schedule

Thank you and happy running!

Lactate Threshold

Lactate Threshold (LT) refers to the speed at which you can run without the levels of lactic acid beginning to build up in your muscles or blood.  LT has been called the single biggest determining factor in how well an athlete can run in a distance race.

Time to develop: Years

Why didn't I write about LT first? Although LT is a hugely important factor in distance running success, LT workouts are more strenuous and have the possibility of becoming WAY harder than they need to be if athletes aren't honest with themselves about their effort levels.  Plus, when young runners do easy or moderate distance runs, they improve their LT a little bit anyway.


The above chart shows the blood lactate curves for two different hypothetical runners.  Runner A has the blood lactate profile of someone who can run 5k somewhere in the mid 20:00 minute range.  Runner B has the blood lactate profile of someone who can run a 5k somewhere in the mid 16:00 minute range.  If these are high school boys, Runner A is going to be buried in the pack at the TVL Championship Meet and Runner B is a potential TVL Champion.

Bear in mind, These curves are hypothetical based on numbers that I just made up.  However, there are a couple of things I want you to notice about this graph because the numbers I made up are based on well established research on how people build up blood lactate as they run.

• Notice that for both athletes, at slower speeds, their blood lactate levels are fairly low and the levels do not increase that quickly
• As the speed increases their blood lactate approaches 4.0 millimoles per deciliter (mmol/dl)
• After 4.0 mmol/dl, both athletes' blood lactate levels begin to rise quickly.  This is the pace that is generally referred to as the athletes Lactate Threshold
• Runner A reaches his lactate threshold at a pace somewhere around 7:00 per mile while runner B reaches his LT at around 6:00 per mile. 
• At paces faster than Lactate Threshold blood lactate levels rise very sharply and the athlete fatigues quickly.

How do we train LT to be higher?

The answer is simple.....train at a pace that is near LT and teach your body to spend a lot of time in that effort zone.  

There are 3 paces that we will use that are all right in the neighborhood of your LT. As of right now, we don't have the equipment to actually measure your individual blood lactate curves, so you will have to be able to FEEL the paces rather than accurately measure the paces.  Here are the paces and how you should FEEL at those paces:

• Steady State: This pace is just below the LT.  You should be able to feel that you are running fast, but should not be feeling any discomfort (burning legs, being out of breath, etc...).  An elite marathoner can run an entire marathon at this pace.  An experienced college runner might hold this pace for an hour in a hard training run.  You all should be aiming to be able to run 30-40 minutes at this effort level.
• Threshold: This pace is the pace that makes your blood lactate levels rise to 4.0 mmol/dl.  This pace is only slightly faster than steady, but may feel quite a bit harder. A well trained runner would only be able to hold this effort level in an all out race for around an hour. For a world class runner, this might be 1/2 marathon race pace.  For a good high school runner this might equal about 45 seconds per mile slower than 5k race pace. Because the pace feels so much harder, I will only ask you to run at this pace for around 18:00-25:00 minutes.  
• Critical Velocity (CV): CV is a newer term for a pace that people have known to train at for a long time.  This pace is slightly faster than LT and will therefore cause lactate levels to rise fairly quickly.  Trying to run 20:00-30:00 minutes at CV pace would be almost as hard as a race. Because of this, we will only do CV paced training in the form of intervals. Each of these intervals will last somewhere between 4:00-6:00 and the total number of minutes at CV pace for a given workout will equal 20:00-25:00 total minutes. For an elite runner, CV pace might be somewhere between 10k race pace and 1/2 marathon race pace.  For most of you CV pace is probably equal to a pace 20 seconds per mile slower than 5k race pace. 

For help determining the pace that you should run at, use Tinman's Running Calculator .  Please note: Where Tinman uses the term tempo we will use the term steady state

For fun, compare the pace you ran on our last steady state run to the pace that you should have been at based on your PRs and figure out how far away from track season's peak you were.

Steady State Paces, 6/18/18

• Austin - 6:16
• J.P. - 6:46
• Murphy - 7:24
• Dario - 7:30
• Emily F. - 7:30
• Trace - 7:36
• Elizette - 7:54
• Jessie - 7:56
• Tanner - 8:21
• Blanca - 8:40
• Briana - 8:47
• Emely H - 8:59
• Katelyn - 9:03
• Erick - 9:30

Neuromuscular Efficiency

Hi Team.  This is part 2 of what I think will end up being a 6 part series on the essential components you need in your training and your lifestyle in order to run at your best.  Remember, I'm doing these in order of which factor takes the longest to develop.  Last week, the topic was cardiovascular development.  Runners spend the most time on cardiovascular development because it is of utmost importance to our sport AND it takes years to fully develop.

The Importance of Neuromuscular efficiency

The next factor that you need in order to fully develop as a runner is Neuromuscular efficiency.  Let's break that word down: Neuro refers to your nervous system and Muscular refers to your muscles.  Put those terms together and add efficiency to them and I hope you can understand that this factor in your performance refers to the ability of your nervous system to control your muscles to move you forward quickly while using as little energy as possible!

I'm sure you can all imagine 2 runners in a race.  Both have the same capacity to use oxygen, both want to win just as bad. But if  Athlete A has to use 2% more energy while running at the same pace as Athlete B, then in the final 800m, Athlete A will be out of gas and Athlete B will still have something left for the kick.

How Do You Develop Neuromuscular Efficiency.  

So, you've decided that you want to be more efficient in your running.  How do you get there?  There are a number of ways.  

1. You know those drills we do?  We do those for a reason.  Those drills are designed to teach a specific neural pattern that your brain will use to control your body so that it is as efficient as possible.  Those drills also have a nice warm up component to them, but mostly when we do them, what I am wanting to see is for all of you to pay attention and do them correctly.  
2. The Principle of Specificity tells us that if you want to run fast, then you need to....well, run fast! Even more important than doing drills is the practice of incorporating low intensity fast running into your workouts on a regular basis.  Most runners do some sort of Striders or Strides throughout the weeks and months of a season.  
3. The third way to become efficient at running at a specific race pace is to practice running at that race pace....Simple, right?  The key when we are trying to develop efficiency is to practice running at that pace when we are not exhausted already.  If we want to know what it feels like to run fast effortlessly, then we need to do some practice running at specific race paces when we are fresh.  Because we want to be fresh for each repetition we do, we will take a fair amount of rest in between each one.  This type of training is commonly known as Repetition Training or Reps for short.  A very basic workout to train neuromuscular efficiency during the summer may be something like

• a light warm up, including neural activation drills
• an easy run of 20-30 minutes
• a set of running drills
• 4 striders with a jog back to the starting line as a recovery
• 8 x 200m at mile goal pace with about 90 seconds of recovery
• 10 minutes of light jogging
• 5 minutes of stretching. 
• Remember, the goal of this type of training is not to exhaust yourself, it is to teach yourself to run fast at a relaxed pace

How Often Should You Do This Type Of Training?

You should work on it a little bit every day.  No, you don't need to run 200s every day and NO, you don't need to run strides every day.  But, just about every day, you should be doing something....either drills, strides, or reps.

A Word Of Caution About Strides

Strides can be as easy or difficult as you make them.  I often see athletes on an "easy day" run 10 x 100m hard sprints with very little recovery in between reps.  In my book, those aren't strides, that is a workout designed to develop speed endurance and developing speed endurance is HARD. Therefore, athletes doing hard strides on an easy day are canceling out the recovery that the easy day should have provided.  Strides shouldn't be hard, they should be relaxed and comfortable.  Remember, you're trying to teach your body to run fast while relaxed.

The Value of Easy Runs and Mileage

The factors needed to run fast when it counts

Over the next few weeks, I'd like to lay out the training principles that have guided the way that I prepare Hughson athletes to race.  I'm going to go through the factors that are the most responsible for racing performance in order from those that take the longest to develop to those that develop relatively quickly. Briefly, in order those factors are:

• Aerobic capacity (your body's ability to use oxygen to create energy)
• Neuro-muscular efficiency (the ability of your muscles and nervous system to work smoothly together to move you along the course with as little effort as possible)
• Lactate Threshold (the ability to run fast for long periods without building up lactic acid)
• Anaerobic capacity (the ability to create energy without oxygen)
• Lactate Tolerance (the ability to tolerate the lactic acid that builds up)

When you've raised each of these factors as much as you can possibly raise them for a season and are ready to race your best, we can say you are peaking.  The goal of any season is to bring these physiological factors to their maximum at the end of the season and be ready to run your best race when it counts the most. 

Aerobic Capacity: Time to develop this - years

Physiologists have long agreed that one of the most important factors in running success is the ability of your heart to deliver oxygen to your muscles and the ability for your muscles to use it.....aerobic capacity 

There are two main factors that determine aerobic capacity.  Today, I'd like to focus on the easiest one to understand: your heart.  Your heart is responsible for pumping blood around your body.  That blood contains things your muscles need to work: Oxygen and Nutrients.  The more blood your heart can deliver to your muscles, the harder they can work.   

There are only two factors that determine how much blood your heart can pump: heart rate (the number of times your heart beats per minute) and stroke volume (the amount of blood your heart pumps with each beat). Your maximum heart rate will not increase as you get in better shape.  This means that in order to train your heart, you need to make it pump more blood per beat. 

So, how do we train the heart to do this? Simple, get the heart to spend a lot of time at maximum stroke volume.  The longer you keep your heart working at a level that causes it to reach maximum stroke volume, the better your heart will adapt.

How do I know if I'm at maximum stroke volume?

Measuring stoke volume takes some serious science equipment.  Luckily for  us, studies have been done on athletes to determine when they reach maximum stroke volume.  I'd like to share one with you that I read in grad school.  The study contained 3 groups of subjects

• Group 1 were not trained athletes
• Group 2 were athletes trained for a speed/power sport (volleyball)
• Group 3 were trained endurance athletes (college cross country runners)

These athletes were put on a treadmill and ran an exercise test where their stroke volumes were measured as the speed of the treadmill got faster and faster.  Here is what the study found

• The untrained runners reached maximum stroke volume at a heart rate of about 130 beats per minute.  Their stroke volumes then actually began to get smaller as their heart rates continued to speed up.
• The athletes who were trained for volleyball also reached their highest stroke volume at about 130 beats per minute.  Their stoke volume stayed at maximum until they reached a heart rate of about 150 beats per minute.  After this, their stroke volume values also began to decrease.
• Although the cross country runners had higher stroke volumes than the other test subjects, they did not reach maximum stroke volume until their heart rates reached 150 beats per minute.  As the treadmill continued to accelerate, the athlete's stroke volume did not decrease until their heart rates were almost at maximum.

So, what does this study mean for your guys' training?

• If you are a total newbie, your heart rate only needs to reach 130 for you to get some training benefit.
• If you're coming from another sport such as football or volleyball, you will get your maximum benefit at heart rates somewhere between 130 and 150 beats per minute.
• If you are a veteran, your most effective heart rate for training will be about 150 beats per minute.

After reading this you might think, "Dang, 150 beats per minute sounds fast!  How am I going to run with my heart going that fast?" 150 BPM really isn't that fast.  Most of you probably have maximum heart rates well over 200 and when you run a 5k race your average heart rate for the whole thing is probably around 95-98% of that maximum.  So, if you want to run at 150 BPM, you really only need to be going 75% effort.  This effort level should feel pretty easy.  

Let me re-state that:  For the majority of your running, your heart rate does not need to exceed 75% of its maximum.  Beyond that level of 150 BPM, you won't get any extra training benefit for your heart.

Why shouldn't I go over 75% heart rate for most of my training?

The simple answer to this question is: TIME. If you don't get any extra training benefit for your heart by making it beat faster than 150 beats per minute, then the only way to get a stronger training stimulus is to keep your heart rate at that 150 BPM level for more TIME. If you go too fast, it cuts down the amount of time you can spend training at the most effective level.

This is the reason that almost every elite runner in the world has spent  thousands of hours throughout her life running at a pace that doesn't cause her heart rate to exceed 75% of its maximum.  Remember, developing an elite level heart takes years and the only way to do that is to patiently run as many miles as you can at a easy to moderate pace.

If all that stuff about staying below 150 BPM is true, do I ever need to run fast in training?

Yes, you do.  There are other factors to you racing fast.  But we'll discuss those another day.