“We begin with intensity and then hope to extend that intensity.” “Instead of starting from a position of volume and having that be the largest determining factor, we are now starting from a position of intensity,” Simmons says.
photo: 101 Degrees West Bigger and Bigger Chunks of Intensity That’s not an option for most runners, but there are similar workouts that can help ambitious age-group runners achieve the same effect. Indeed, the best East Africans are running as much as 40K (about 25 miles) at near-marathon race pace at 8,000 feet of altitude as part of their marathon buildup. One of the key workouts in this new training regimen is a long, hard run at marathon race pace, which marks a move away from the long, slow distance run (aka, an “LSD” run) age-group marathoners traditionally complete once every weekend. While the trend sprouted among elite runners and has been a key reason for the recent drop in times at the international level, the same principles can help recreational runners get faster, too. In other words, instead of simply training to finish 26.2 miles and relying on whatever speed you bring, runners are training to run 26.2 miles faster with workouts specific to the demands of sustaining a challenging pace over the miles. “The focus has changed from simply preparing for the distance of 26.2 miles to preparing for the pace that would allow for running fast over that distance,” says Scott Simmons, who heads the American Distance Project, a group established in Colorado Springs in 2011 to help American runners compete on the international stage. If you’ve completed a few marathons and want to run faster, running long, hard runs could be a key training stimulus for you.
Times, they are a changin’, and the traditional marathoner mentality that long, slow distance gets the job done is becoming a thing of the past.
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