In an earlier post I described a relatively conservative and sensible approach to initiating a running programme. Going through a walk / run programme at the beginning of any period of running is a wise move no matter how young and fit you are and no matter how much prior running experience you have. Almost everyone who has ever run regularly has encountered some kind of musculoskeletal injury as a result of the biomechanical stresses of running compared to other activities. No one has perfect running biomechanics. High performance athletes spend countless hours working on their biomechanics partly to avoid injury and partly to increase efficiency, but most of us simply run. When we do so, small imbalances in posture and gait almost always lead to unequal loading of various muscles groups. Often when we are young these are simply handled without any issues but, with age or with a severe enough imbalance, injuries inevitably crop up making a gradual progression at any age a wise approach to avoid future problems.
What about after you are able to comfortably run for 30 - 40 minutes without stopping and you want to progress to greater running fitness? There are many, many approaches to increasing running performance but the most important place to start is with an analysis of your goals. Do you want to complete your first half marathon or marathon? Do you want to improve your 10km run time? Do you want to try to get back to your high-school personal best for the mile? All of these example goals will require vastly different approaches to training progression. However, in my opinion at least, there are three fundamental types of running workouts: 1) distance; 2) threshold; 3) intervals. These typically decrease in distance and increase in speed in that order. When working on distance you are, obviously, going to run longer distances but you'll have to do so at slower speeds than the other two types of workouts. Interval runs are typically very short (less than 1 mile) repetitive bouts of high or maximal-intensity work, and threshold runs fall in the middle. Increasing your fitness in all three areas is important for almost any running goal, but your focus will change depending on your specific goal(s).
It's not rocket science (or, as a colleague of mine likes to say, "rocket surgery") to figure out that training for distance races such as marathons or half-marathons requires a vast amount of distance work. The bulk of your training will involve a gradual increase in the distance you are able to run in one workout. A rough ball-park guideline on how much to progress in distance is no more than 10% per week. If you are able to run for 30 minutes this week, then next week's goal is to be able to run 33 minutes in a workout. The following week might take you to 35-36 minutes and so on. Building up to a 3 or 4 (or more) hour marathon will obviously take a while at this rate, especially since the rate of progression should probably decrease as your length of distance runs increases (all in an attempt to avoid injury and reach long-term goals gradually and consistently). The other two types of workouts, mixed into your training routine, will certainly help your distance performance, but you'll need to focus on distance work. More on this type of training later...
Threshold work is the least fun in my experience. Threshold, or more accurately anaerobic threshold, is that intensity at which you are no longer able to supply all your energy demands primarily through aerobic metabolism. Therefore, your body starts to rely more and more heavily on anaerobic metabolism. Unfortunately this comes at a heavy cost, both in efficiency and in the production of waste products such as lactic acid which cause that tell-tale burning feeling in your legs combined with extreme breathlessness. Running below your threshold intensity can be sustained for longer periods (such as in a distance workout). Once your intensity increases to above your threshold, you are on borrowed time and relatively quickly you'll have to slow down or stop. But running right at your anaerobic threshold will generally allow you to keep running for a reasonably extended period of time (say 30 minutes), but with gradually increasing fatigue and pain. In the end you'll have to slow down or stop, but the process of getting to that point will be slow and gradual (like some sort of Chinese torture). Threshold workouts typically last in the neighbourhood of 30 minutes and they are as high intensity as you can manage for that period of time. The goal is to gradually increase the speed that you can run for about 30 - 40 minutes. At first you might be able to sustain 7.5mph for 30 minutes of running. After some significant work and training, perhaps you manage to raise that sustainable speed to 8.0mph for 30 minutes, and so on. Threshold work is obviously critical for any sort of middle distance performance such as a 5km or 10km race, because that is the intensity you'll be running the race at.
Interval work involves very high intensity (above threshold) running for very short bouts (typically 5 minutes or less). The idea is to work as hard as you can for a given period of time, then take a few minutes of recovery at a much lower intensity, and then repeat the higher intensity work. This is repeated multiple times ranging anywhere from 2 or 3 repetitions up to 20 - 30 repetitions (for experienced, high performance runners). Normally, the way to initiate yourself into interval work is to start with longer intervals (say 5 minutes) and gradually, over weeks and months, decrease the length of the interval and increase the speed (as well as the number of repetitions). For 5 minute intervals, 2 or 3 repetitions may be enough to begin with, but eventually if you work your way to doing 1 or 2 minute intervals you may want 5 - 10 repetitions to get a good workout.
These are the three main fundamentals of running training. Each workout can likely fall into one of these three categories. Later on I'll explore the details of each.
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