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| Andrew Huston is a distance runner at LSU. He just recently ran 4:13 for the full mile indoors |
"A race is all go and no blow, so why practice resting"
--- Bruce Denton, Once A Runner
Running Philosophy: It hurts; it's going to hurt no matter how good you get at it, so deal with it. Other than that, put one foot in front of the other and you'll do just fine.
Training Philosophy: This differs depending on what you are trying to accomplish. I'll give examples for cross country season (college and high school) 800m'ers, and milers.
XC: Strength is key here. It is possible to run fast times in high school without much base, but you're only running 3 miles. In college where you run 8k (5 miles) and 10k (6.2 miles) you need to be strong to do this. The best way to build strength is to run a huge base over the summer. This doesn't mean that you run 170 miles like Shorter would do training for marathons, this means that you gradually increase miles over a period of time. One thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't ever be afraid to be flexible when building a base. Now is not a good time to get hurt, try to push it if you can, but don't be afraid to back off a little either. Find that happy medium. How many miles should you do? Well, that depends, first; how fast are you? Second, how serious are you? Once you can answer these 2 questions you'll be on your way to developing a training program. Answering the first question is easy, answering the second is a bit tougher. You may be gung-ho the first week or two but then what? You have to be pretty dedicated to want to keep going. Now, you've determined that you are a 16:00 3-mile runner and you are dedicated to run at least once every day, maybe twice on some days. So now it's gets hard to outline a plan. My recommendation is to run once a day for a few weeks, at least until you feel pretty strong. It's not too hard to run 40 or 50 MPW on one run a day. Once you've done this you can either start adding in longer runs, which I'd recommend or higher quality runs, which I wouldn't do until later in the summer. The importance of the long run is undeniable in base training. You get good aerobic conditioning, enabling you to run harder longer and you develop a cardiovascular system that can handle just about anything, you also temper your legs so that you will be used to running for a long time. Now if you want to, you can start adding in a few morning runs or afternoon runs, depending on when your main run is, just make sure to push the envelope at a moderate pace. Don't try to go from 60 MPW to 100 MPW after just one week. Also when you do increase mileage, don't jump by 30 MPW, do it gradually, you shouldn't really increase by more than 20 MPW from one week to the other. Once you start increasing mileage, do it in 3 or 4-week cycles. For example increase MPW for 2 or 3 weeks then the last week of the cycle decrease again, but not to a number lower than previous period's low mileage. So a 4-week cycle might look like this, Week 1: 60, Week 2: 65, Week 3: 70, Week 4: 55; Week 1: 63, Week 2: 68, Week 3: 73, Week 4: 58-60. This way you can get your rest one week without losing too much or taking a lot of time off. If you are really really really really Bruce Denton, Quenton Cassidy-ish (if you don't know who these fictional characters are, try to beg, borrow or buy a copy of Once A Runner and read it) hardcore, then you can just run right through fatigue and go on breaking down. But since this is the base building period, I wouldn't recommend it. But remember, if you do experiment, it's up to you and you're the only one that can take blame, BEWARE OVERTRAINING IN THE SUMMER!! Toward the end of the base building period it is OK to start lowering mileage and increasing quality of runs, but only for 1 or 2 weeks, MAX. You do this to get your legs used to some faster turnover and to back off the miles for a bit so that you don't get totally trashed out during the summer.
Once school starts (usually marks the beginning of the season) you should start mixing in some longer intervals and keep that up at least until your first or second race, depending on how long your season is. The longer your season, the longer you want to put off doing some speed stuff and peaking too soon. If you are a good runner and can breeze through some early meets, you might consider running through them or using them as tempo runs, or simply not running at all. Some sample workouts that I would do early in the season include 3x1.5 mile, last year's race pace, 4-5 min break, 2m-1m-1m, goal race pace, 7-4 break, 6x800, 3 secs faster than goal race pace, 3 min break. On the easy days you should still get in pretty decent mileage, running anywhere from 50-75 minutes. Early in the season you shouldn't be afraid to run the day after a meet, you'll be a little sore, but that means you take it easy for the first 15-20 minutes. Like I said earlier, long runs are the key if you want to be a successful runner. Michael Johnson even did once-weekly 5 milers and he's a 200-400 guy, so you can't underestimate the importance of a regular long run in your program. The question now is how long, the same as your longest run over the summer usually. If you did go hardcore over the summer and ran something insane, like 17 miles once a week, then cut that down to 9-14 miles, depending on the time of year and your abilities and time available. As the season progresses your workouts should theoretically get harder (faster, as in turnover) up to a point in the season, about 3-4 weeks out of your big meet. That's the point when you start doing some fast stuff and getting the leg turnover, nothing too hard that will drain you too much. In fact, I recommend just starting off with strides to help get the legs used to turning over. For cross country I don't think its beneficial to do repeat 400s, unless that 400 is uphill the whole way or if you can do them long enough to keep your heart rate up for at least 30 mins of exercise. To taper just start dropping off the miles and try to keep up the quality, the only time its OK to do 400s in cross is when you are tapering, then you just do them to turnover and keep the legs snappy. Be smart at the end of the season and listen to your body, if it says, "take a day off" take a day off, no big thing all the work should've been done earlier in the season.