Endurance race preparation -
Renown as one the ultimate endurance events, the Tour de France places huge demands on the competing athletes. Inching up mountains in the heat as they cycle 2, miles over a gruelling three-week period.
The London Marathon alone saw a record total of applicants in , with , people entering the ballot to run — while one of the fastest growing endurance events is Swimrunning , which came to being in and now has more than events in Europe alone.
But how can you best prepare for an endurance event, ensuring that both your training and nutrition are up to the mark? The first tip is to gradually increase your distance and time. This will help you to improve steadily, building up physical and mental stamina. Diego Novella started competing in Swimruns in The event alternates between swimming and running as participants cross wild landscapes, unable to stop and change kit during the race, which often means swimming in trainers and running in wetsuits.
Novella has twice completed the OtillO Swimrun World Championships in Sweden , involving 65 km of trail running and 10 km of open-water swimming. Get to an hour of activity and then go further, first an hour and a half, then two and so on, to get closer to the goal.
While building up cardio endurance is key, increasing strength is also crucial, helping athletes to perform better and reduce injury risk. Think jump squats , lunges and chin ups, for example. Maintaining strength and muscle mass will keep joints healthy. Weight lifting can also build stronger ligaments and tendons, allowing you to withstand more training stress.
This can improve consistency and fuel faster race times. Chiefly, the higher your top speed is — whether running, swimming or cycling — the more economical you will be, and the easier the race pace will feel.
Speed work can also improve technique. Moving faster means activating more muscle groups, enhancing how muscles communicate with the brain. A week or so before an event, training should taper off.
But while strength, endurance and speed are vital ingredients for endurance athletes, the right fuel is pivotal. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy used during exercise. Increase carbohydrate intake before training, with carb rich foods such as bread, rice, cereals and baked potatoes.
In fact, higher protein diets may give endurance athletes an added edge. Up your protein intake as the intensity, frequency and duration of your exercise increases. Chicken, eggs and milk are top sources, as well as plant-based proteins such as soy and quinoa.
Moderate amounts of whole wheat bread, bran cereal, fruit and vegetables are all top choices. This can work quite well for some but I generally recommend to complement running with other habits like stretching, strength and cross training, as well as nutrition and equipment.
Before you can plan and carry out your training, you have to define what you actually train for. In other words: You need a running goal. Finishing a race of a specific distance or running a new PB are the most common running goals.
But also try to think a bit outside the box. Loosing a certain amount of weight, being outside for a defined amount of hours each week, or reduce your stress level are also goals you can easily achieve with running.
You can think about way more than just races and finishing times. The most important thing about a running goal is that it suits you. Your goal and the training towards achieving it, need to fit into your lifestyle. Your job, your family and friends as well as your health should always come first.
Choose a goal and an amount of training that gives your life balance and energy and not the contrary. Also a goal needs to respect your current fitness level.
If you need an idea for which distance and time goals you are ready, check out the trainings plans that come along with this guide.
You can find them at the end of this article. You can find it here:. How To Set Your Next Running Goal. As trivial as this information may seem, it is still what I consider the foundation of any running training program.
Even after a decade of running these principles and fundamentals are what drive my running training. This is the basic training principle that you have to internalize. Because it shows you how improvement actually works.
This is absolutely key to understand in order to design a good training program and get the most out of the hours you are working out. As you can see in the graphic below, your body goes through different phases during and after a workout.
These are:. As you can see timing your training is very important. But to know when your body is ready for the next training stimulus is not that easy.
Experience and constant reflection on your training and how your body reacts to it is needed. Many think of running or most other endurance sports as just simply train your heart and muscles. Without a doubt are these body parts very important when it comes to running.
I rather think of endurance running as a full body sport. You land on your feet which triggers the whole suspension chain. The dozens of bones, ligaments and muscles of your foot are the first stage of reducing the impact force of the step you just took.
After that your calf muscles fire as well as your quads that stabilize your knee. Also your hips and back are important parts of your suspension chain. The core of your body maintains a proper upright running posture and the swing of your arms fosters a constant forward motion. Your musculoskeletal system with hundreds of ligaments, tendons, bones, fascia and muscles supports the movement of running.
Fresh oxygen goes through your respiratory track to your lungs where it is fetched by red blood cells. Your heart pumps your blood and transports oxygen and nutrients to your muscles and organs. Your muscles transform the energy you took in and your dietary system processed, into muscle contraction and therefore motion.
Being mentally tough is crucial when going for the marathon or ultra marathon distances. As you can see running is more complex than many think and needs your entire body in order to be carried out. For planning I usually consider different levels as far as time. The smallest is of course the workout itself.
Over your training weeks and structuring week training blocks per year, the most long-term view would be your entire running career. These levels affect each other and I recommend you to start with your long-term structure and go top down right to your single training session.
Having a clear vision and multi-year plan in place, makes planning your training block and weeks much easier. If you wanna get somewhere you need to work towards it for a long time.
As I mentioned many times, having a running dream is one of the best ways to keep your motivation up over the years. Having a clear vision about where you wanna go is what drives you forward and defines intermediate goals that you can train for in different training blocks.
You can be quite ambitious with your long-term running goal. Consider that endurance running is a sport you can do for decades. And if you keep training consistently for many years, you can achieve awesome things. Having a long-term vision requires you to stay on track over many years and therefore stay healthy.
After each year look back at what you achieved and define a realistic goal for the next year. Try to run 5k and 10k races in the first year and work towards establishing a sustainable running habit. In the second year you can go to the half marathon distance and run two or three races. After that you can take a year time to transform to the full marathon distance.
Run your first marathon and adapt your body and habits to this distance and the training efforts. And then finally you can keep improving, gather experience and train for qualifying for the Boston Marathon. If you want too much too fast you just get injured and frustrated.
Sure you might be able to achieve this in half the time, but would this be reasonable? Just consider that amateur runners do not have the same resources as pro athletes.
But that can be an advantage as far as health. You have to learn a feeling for your body and learn to be adaptable yourself. No team doctors, therapists, coaches and pro team mates. I usually divide a running year into training blocks with weeks of training.
But why this fragmentation of a training year into several blocks? A training block gives you time to specifically train a certain aspect like endurance or speed. Within the weeks of training you have a heavy workload with distinct improvement.
Between the training blocks you can measure your fitness level, figure out if you met your expectations and find weak spots you want to improve in the next training block. Having four to six of these blocks gives you the chance to prepare for different races with different requirements within a single running season.
Within the weeks of training you should also have a certain structure. To reduce the chance of overtraining and injury and give your body time to react to the training stimulus you set with your workouts, you should plan a recovery week after weeks of hard training.
I usually go with two weeks of heavy training followed by one week with reduced training volume and intensity. In this weeks you can also do recovery activities like getting a massage or going to the sauna.
When you know what focus you want to set in a training block, you can now plan out the running weeks within a block. If your block spans across 12 weeks you have four mini blocks with two weeks of training followed by one week of recovery.
If you wanna get the most out of your training and keep improvement at a constant rate, your training weeks get harder and harder over time. So how do you tackle a single week of training? Let me give you a few guidelines for that purpose:. With this constant repetition of planning, executing and analyzing you get better and better and squeeze the most out of your training activities.
Also your single workout needs a minimum amount of planning and can be structured into different parts. This is especially the case for beginners and long-term training plans. Always listen to your body and keep a health first attitude.
The worst that can happen is that you get injured or beaten up too much by your training. This is probably the best tip I can give you. As you gain more and more experience you learn how to plan and execute your training specifically for your needs.
Always think long-term and not for fast and unhealthy success. If you search online you can find dozens of different types of workouts and training techniques. As all those may be valuable I wanna make things really easy here and just present you three types of running workouts.
Every other training run you find is simply a variation of these three workout types. Each of these runs train a specific mechanism of your body that is needed if you wanna improve as a runner.
Obviously the best is to combine all of these in your training as most training plans do. Of course my own training plans combine all of these workouts.
You can find 30 free training plans for distances from 5k to marathon at the bottom of this post. The first workout and my favorite is the long run.
As the name already reveals this is the longest run of your training week as far as time and also distance. The goal of the long run is to increase your endurance, thus the ability to keep going at constant pace further and further.
You can achieve this by making your energy metabolism more efficient and train your body to use a higher amount of fat for energy supply. So bottom line the long run trains fat metabolism. But this is not the only advantage of the long run.
When training for long distances the regular long run also helps you prepare the mental side. You get used to keep moving for hours straight and all the challenges that come along with that.
The long run is also great to test out different things. What kind of music will work when having a low. Or which clothes and equipment works the best. So how should you do a long run?
The most important thing is to always keep the intensity at a low rate. In this intensity your body can use mostly fat for energy supply. But you should still do most of your running at a low intensity.
When I was training for half marathons my long runs were between 15k and 22k, for marathon training I recommend to do k long runs, This may look like impossible distances in training but doing these are especially important to build the endurance to be able to run long distance races.
The topic of nutrition during the long run is a bit controversial. I originally learned to not take in any energy at all during the run but just drink water.
Others think this is completely crazy. The reason I did it is this: On a long run you use all the carbohydrates that are stored in you blood, muscles and liver.
After running out of carbs your body uses fat as the primary source of energy. With that method you stimulate your body to burn fats more efficiently and therefore increase fat metabolism.
Also hitting the wall in training helps you prepare for what happens during a race. As my long runs are nowadays more on hilly terrain and therefore a bit more intense, I also take one or the other energy gel with me.
Of course you should start your long run well hydrated and with full reserves in your carbohydrate storage. And after the run fill your carb and hydration levels up again as fast as possible.
The Long Run And How to Do It Right. The second type of training is at a much higher intensity as the long run. The point of this workout is not to gain endurance but to increase the pace you can keep up for the duration of a race.
In other words: This workout makes you faster. With intense workouts you increase your aerobic capacity which means to work at a higher performance while maintaining an aerobic energy state.
Your legs start to burn and you just need to get slower to get rid of the lactate in your muscles. Not only for your cardiovascular and respiratory system but also for your locomotive system.
There are plenty of different high intensity workouts you can incorporate in your training regime. For all of them a proper warm up and cool down is necessary.
I usually do 2k at the beginning and end for this purpose. Probably the most effective type of training to increase speed is interval training. This pattern of high intensity and recovery trains not only running faster but also being able to recover in less time.
A fast recovery is directly correlated to an increased aerobic capacity. What the Hell is a Fartlek Run? The long run and the intense workouts are the most important parts of your running routine and as mentioned before you should do them every week.
If your goal is to gain endurance, focus a bit more on the long run, if you want to run faster, set a focus on intense workouts. Doing a long run and an interval training each week you only have two workouts set.
Endurance race preparation High-intensity interval training the same? Check out Athlete bone health and genetic factors ultimate Endurancw running training guide Enxurance download 30 FREE training plans to Enxurance you started. Whether Endyrance like 5K or marathons and no matter your level:Here you find the insights to get improvement. Written by Mikula. To be honest, I love planning a running goal, training towards it for months and finally succeed. If you stick to a regular running routine you can see amazing improvement over the years. Endurance race preparation the lowdown on the latest footwear preparxtion, expert Enduracne advice, Endurance race preparation giveaways and motivational stories from athletes around Enduance world. Endurnce email newsletter will bring Enduracne inspiring news on your favourite Endurancf and activities, Eco-Safe Energy Options to your inbox. By providing your email address you are agreeing to receive promotions, offers and newsletters from Michelin Lifestyle Limited via email. Your email address will be used to manage your marketing preferences and subscriptions, measure the performance of our campaigns, and analyse your interactions with our communications. You can withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. For information on how we process your personal information, see our privacy policy.
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