Endurance Training

Should you maintain a running log?

September 23, 2019 by Editor

You cannot manage what you do not track. Whether it is in business or in sports, you need to collect data so you can analyse your performance and then make a decision on how you can improve your performance going forward.

When it comes to running, it is a must! Thankfully, there are several apps that make it much easier to maintain a running log nowadays.

There are different types of data that you want to track when you maintain a running log.

The distance that you are running.
The time that you run the distance in.
The interval splits that you are running over the distance (100m, 200m, 400m, 1000m, etc)
The average pace (ideally you can track this in real-time)
Your heart rate whilst doing the exercise.
Gradients during your run.

The goal is to make progression with each run that you do. This progression will allow you to improve over time and make new personal bests.

Where should you maintain your running log?

Nowadays, it is easier to maintain the logs on your phone via apps.

If you have a smartwatch, you can use it and sync the data to your phone. An Apple Watch is a great way to easily track your data.

You can also keep a logbook and document the details of your training and performance.

Manually keep your running log in notes.

Tips for running in the cold.

August 25, 2019 by Editor

When you run in the cold, you increase the risk of getting an injury either through your muscle’s inflexibility and responsiveness, or being exposed to elements such as ice and snow.

You also want to keep illness away.

What should you do to run effectively in the cold?

Wrap up in the right running gear for the cold.

You need to keep all areas on your body warm. Your joints, your muscles, your hands, your feet, neck, torso and head.

Wear thermals to increase your body’s temperature and wear warm leggings that will increase the body temperature for your muscles.

You want to make sure your body’s temperature remains elevated while you are running.

When you commence your run, your heart rate will increase your body’s temperature, but you won’t really start to feel the blood pumping warmly around the body for at least 10 minutes into your run.

Always keep your body moving.

Due to the extreme temperatures that you will be facing, try to keep your body moving. Slow down, but don’t stop. Keep your muscles warm at all times.

Stretch well.

You will be more susceptible to injury when your body is cold. Stretch well before and even during your run.

Increase the intensity progressively.

Don’t go out with all your guns blazing. Start with a steady pace for 10 minutes until your body is warm. Once it is warm, increase the pace.

How to start jogging.

August 25, 2019 by Editor

The thought of jogging when you have never done it or you just want to start doing some physical activity is daunting. So in this post, we are going to provide some cues and tactics that will help you start jogging and progress your jogging and running performance.

Before you start running, establish if you have any limitations.

These limitations may be:

Injuries or pains related to the running motion.

If you do have these, you need to rehabilitate yourself and make sure that any running or jogging activities won’t aggravate the injury.

Breathing problems.

This will affect your respiratory. If you suffer from asthma, bronchitis, or any other respiratory issues, please make sure you seek medical advice before doing any running activities.

Weight challenges.

The heavier you are, the more likely the running and jogging motion will affect your joints. So you need to do activities that will condition your body to become lighter and handle the stress of the weight while you are running.

Start by doing some walking.

You want to condition your body propelling itself in a horizontal movement. You should be able to maintain a pace of 3km per hour. So it should take you 20 minutes to walk 1km. 40 minutes to walk 2km. 60 minutes to walk 3km.

Do what you can and monitor how your body feels. You want to progressively increase the intensity of your walking speed based on how your body responds.

If you find that your body is starting to feel lighter and more fluid with the walking movements, then you will be able to progress to light jogging.

Introduce intervals of jogging.

To start the jogging motion, you only need to focus on doing the following.

Land on the balls of your foot (front)
Keep your elbows tucked in when doing so.
Make sure you focus on one foot going in front of the other.

As you progress from walking, introduce 250-500m of interval running where you will be maintaining a light jogging pace.

Monitor how your body responds.

Progress to jogging with a longer stride length.

Once you have started to find your rhythm, you want to focus on increasing your stride length while running. This will allow you to cover a longer amount of distance with the same effort.

This will make the running more intense.

Focus on jogging and making sure that your foot comes over your ankles with each stride.

As you become better, you want to increase this to your shin area. And then progress to your knee height.

Transition to tempo runs.

These are runs where you only need to complete jogging over a certain amount of time. This will condition your body to run for that amount of time.

It will also see you keep your heart rate up and it will help you lean out your body so that you end up running with less body fat.

Transition to distance runs.

Once you feel more comfortable jogging, you want to transition to jogging at a pace over a certain distance. Your walking pace would be 3km per hour. You want to jog at a pace between 4-10km per hour based on what feel comfortable doing.

The faster you run, the more intense it will be.

Maintain a progression that will see you achieve the distance milestones in 1km blocks.

Make sure you keep yourself motivated.

Running can be boring, so make sure you use methods to keep yourself interested.

Set a routine and have a set time where you will do your run.
Keep entertained with music or podcasts.
Find a running route that you enjoy.
Join a running club (physical or social), or run with friends.

Track your weekly and monthly progression.

You need to monitor how you progress in your jogging development. Conduct time trials once a week and assess how your body feels.

How do you motivate yourself to go running?

August 14, 2019 by Editor

If you are training for middle or long-distance running, you may find it tough to get motivated to go running. That’s why it is important to have a running plan and to make running a part of your lifestyle.

If it feels like a chore, it will be a chore. And even though you might force yourself to go running in the beginning. Eventually, it will become boring and you won’t have the motivation to run in the future.

So there are a few ways you can push yourself to run so you maintain your running consistency.

Set a long-term running goal.

You must set a goal that you want to achieve with your running. This will motivate you to work towards your goal regardless of the circumstance that you are in. Whether there is poor weather, or you aren’t feeling in the mood to run, the goal will set your plan of action for running.

You will know what reward you will get at the end of the goal as well.

Set a distance goal.

This is one of the easiest things you can do. And you should increase it progressively. Start with a simple goal of 1km, which might take you up to 10 minutes to complete when you are beginning. And then continue to increase the distance to 2km, 3km, 4km, etc.

Your only goal at that stage will be to complete the required progressive distance.

You can do this 5 days a week and repeat the cycle for a month. You can also track your time and see how you progress with your running time.

Set a time goal.

With the time goal, your only objective is to keep on running a set amount of time. Don’t focus on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other and to keep on running for the set amount of time. Run fast, run slow, or do a mix of both. But DO NOT STOP MOVING while you are running for your time goal.

Track your running interval pace.

Set micro-goals during your running. You can set goals to run at a certain pace during your run. This might be 5 minutes per km, 6 minutes per kilometre, etc.

You will find that you are running with a much higher intensity.

Track your heart rate.

Set a heart rate goal to know that you are improving your cardiovascular endurance. You may set the first week’s goal to run with an average heart rate of 130bpm. Then increase it by 10bpm each week until you get to 80% or more of your maximum bpm.

You can then see how long you can hold this heart rate for when you run.

Ideally, you want to hold this heart rate for longer than your target running distance. 30-60 minutes is ideal.

Make your run a social activity.

Running won’t feel like a chore if you are having fun. And one of the easiest ways to make it feel like fun is if it is done as a social activity.

Run with friends, family, colleagues from work, and even running communities. If you have running apps, you can even compete against others that are doing runs to see where you rank on the ladder.

There’s also running groups like ParkRun, which is free.

You can also nominate yourself to participate in runs for festivals and charity events.

How do you breathe while running?

August 14, 2019 by Editor

You must breathe in a rhythm that will allow oxygen to circulate in your body and that will ensure that enough oxygen is passed through to the muscles.

Depending on the type of running exercise that you are doing, the breathing pattern will differ.

If you are doing a short sprint, it is likely that you will inhale prior to the start of the race. (This is the 100m, 200m or 400m).

Once the race begins, you will exhale over 2-4 seconds.

It is likely that you will inhale for oxygen for every 10-20m that you cover in the race.

For middle and long-distance running events, you will need to gain a breathing pattern that will follow your running cadence.

The most common is 4 steps to inhale, 4 steps to exhale. As your cardiovascular strength increases, you will be able to increase this to 8 or even 10 steps for each inhale or exhale.

Don’t try to rush your breathing.

Don’t try to hold your breath for as long as possible.

What are some ways you can improve your breathing for running?

Do interval training or fartlek training. This will help to build your cardiovascular endurance and it will force you to breathe in a way that will allow your body to circulate the oxygen effectively to the muscles that you are using in your body.

How to run longer.

June 23, 2019 by Editor

There are a few ways you can make yourself run longer. However, in this post, we will focus on how you can run for longer with more intensity and at a faster pace.

You likely want to run longer so you can run a faster time and break through any running distance plateaus.

How can you run longer?

Apply the following to start running longer.

Tempo/Pacing runs

This is where you will run a certain distance and the only objective is to keep on doing the running motion. You can do it fast or slow, but you are not allowed to stop or walk until you have finished the distance.

This will train your body to keep the running motion and the physical demands that your body needs to go through in order to run that distance.

Since you will be running at a tempo, your stride length will be shorter and you will actually do more steps compared to if you were running at a faster pace.

This will build up the timing endurance for you to run at a faster pace.

Below are some screenshots from a run with some distance markers and pacing motivators.

Interval running

This will allow your body to improve your speed endurance and the length of your distance runs.

You will need to set a distance goal. (For example, 5km)

You will run at a pace of 70-90% of your maximum for a distance of either 250m or 500m.

You can then either take a short break (e.g. 60 seconds) and then start the next running phase.

Or you can jog for 250m before starting the next running phase.

Repeat this sequence until you complete the distance.

Keep a time tracker (like an Apple watch) on you to track the pace at which you are running. Ideally, you want to increase the pace of your run between the different intervals.

Incorporate plyometrics training

Do skipping, bounding and hopping 2-3 times a week. This will help you get more explosive and it will help to improve your stride length.

This will allow you to run with fewer strides, but you will cover more distance and thus be able to run longer.

Incorporate leg weight training

Focus on doing explosive weight training such as the Bulgarian split squat, squats, and deadlifts.

The power that you will generate from these exercises will allow you to run faster and longer due to increasing your stride length.

Train over longer distances than your ideal full pace distance.

If you want to run a quick 5km, train at a high intensity over 10km. Make sure the distance is longer so that when you are ready to run the shorter distance, you can really attack it and break any personal records.

Improve your mental focus.

If you want to run a long distance, set it as a mental goal and give yourself no other option other than to complete that goal.

If you set 10km. Complete 10km. If it is 20km, run 20km.

There is no option to quit.

Improve your running technique.

You want to run as efficiently as possible. The less energy you waste, the more energy you can put into having a faster and longer run.

You want to focus on projecting your power forward in a straight line and running with efficient running mechanics.

Let us know how you are progressing with your running distance in the comments below.

How to run faster and longer without getting tired?

June 17, 2018 by Editor

This answer isn’t going to be the one most people want to hear, but it is the answer that will give you the results that you are after. If you want to run faster and longer without getting tired, you will have to train and condition your body to do so. This means performing cardiovascular exercises that are aimed to break your body’s plateau and limits. In other words, you need to train harder than you have before to get your body used to a new level of fitness and speed.

In this post, we provide actionable advice that you will be able to use so that you can run faster and longer without getting tired.

Set your benchmark by doing a 1-hour run.

You will need to run as quickly as you can for 1. You will use this as a benchmark for your training.

Measure the following.
The distance covered in an hour.
Average speed (It’s handy if you have a training watch)
Splits
Average heart rate

Once a month, you are going to do another trial run to measure the improvements from the training that you have been doing.

Do endurance training.

The first thing you need to do is improve your endurance and cardiovascular strength by doing running. These runs will usually be tempo runs over a time duration.

You will need to condition your body to the sport that you are playing or the event that you are training for. If you plan to do an activity like soccer or rugby, you need to condition your body to run at a high intensity for 60-90 minutes. If you run the 400m, you need to condition your body to run at top speed for less than 1 minute. If it is 10km, then you will need to condition your body to run for 50 minutes or less at a high intensity.

You can only achieve this by training your body to run for longer durations at a higher intensity. This will involve a combination of tempo runs for time and tempo runs for distance.

When you are going for distance, you will be aiming to improve your time and you will measure your splits.

What kind of long endurance run should you be doing?

You should be aiming for a 1-2 hour long run at least once a week. Long distance runners measure their weekly running distance and it is common for them to run over 40km a week. (This should equate to around 4h worth of endurance running). You can use this as a benchmark and then scale up your endurance training from there.

Introduce fartlek training into your workout.

This involves running at different paces. However, your body won’t ever stop while you are running. Usually, it involves a combination of running at faster and slower paces. For example, you may run a 4km run with a combination of 1:10m splits on each 3rd 400m and the other 400m being run at 1:30m pace.

This will help you build your stamina and strength endurance.

The video below shows a good demonstration of fartlek training.

Interval training.

Interval training is the most powerful training that you can do to maintain your pace and minimise the deceleration when running. Top athletes will usually conduct intervals at 80-90% of their maximum performance.

Once you have your benchmark, you will be able to plan your interval training sessions.

Your initial recovery time may begin with walkback recoveries or 2-minute recoveries. Eventually, you will want to work up to less than 30 second recoveries.

You can see more about interval training in the video below.

Explosive training.

If you want to build your overall speed, you need to improve the power that you execute. To do this, you need to improve the strength and speed that your legs produce.

The best way to do this is to conduct plyometric exercises. We have provided more details on plyometric exercises here.

Increase your stride length.

Improving your stride length is a great way to increase your speed quickly. You can do this by improving the amount of power that you execute with each stride, accelerating off each stride and improving your ab and hip flexor strength.

You can conduct exercises that we have detailed here.