How Should Runners Train?

Running is a sport which combines tremendous endurance and high speeds of locomotion at very high intensities. Top runners need to train at many different levels of intensity, pace and duration to be competitive. 

A runner who trains only for endurance will not have adapted an ability to tolerate running very fast. A runner who trains only for short sprints will never have the endurance to sustain any speed for very long. The winner is the runner who is prepared to run at faster speeds longer than their competition. In other words, the winner is the athlete with the best developed stamina in the field.

A practical definition for runners of stamina is: the fastest you can run for a given period (of time or distance) before you slow down. Some call stamina speed-endurance, or endurance-speed, or aerobic power. These are all different points on what I call the “stamina spectrum.” For this post, I’m going to keep it simple and refer to the general concept of stamina, which include all these points on the spectrum listed above.

What is the best path to developing stamina? 

One popular school of thought is the more-mileage-is-better philosophy. This comes from a misinterpretation of Lydiard’s training methods. Quoting an elite American distance runner, “A common misconception among runners is thinking they need speed for a better kick at the end of the race. The harsh reality is you need to get to the last lap of the race before you worry about having a kick. If you’re not strong enough to keep pace, your kick is secondary.”

This is an oversimplified understanding. This line of logic may seem appealing and plausible, but it’s flat wrong. It oversimplifies the training problems runners face by suggesting the sequence of training needs to follow a reductionist progression of enhancing one single performance variable at a time to have a positive effect. This is kind of like suggesting you must eat your cereal dry before you can have any milk. It’s a simple, nice, and neat way to think about something is complex but ultimately not effective.

Another point of view is to focus solely on running fast with no endurance work. This idea has reemerged recently due to Tony Hollier’s Feed-The-Cats training philosophy for sprinters and football players. It’s a misapplication to apply Tony’s Feed-The-Cats methods to distance runners by exclusively focusing on increasing runner’s maximum velocity abilities. Doing so limits their endurance capacity and their ability to stay in a distance race for very long.

Your fitness level is the sum of what you do to keep in shape. Our bodies are constantly changing and developing under the influence of the type of exercises we elect to do — and not do. 

Training is like baking a cake. A well made cake is the result of the right mixture of ingredients, time in the oven, and frosting applied once it has cooled. If you skip a step or omit a critical ingredient, all your hard work will result in a less delicious cake. Ingredients, timing, and patience matter.  

Mileage is like the flour and speed is like the sugar. Without flour the cake doesn’t rise. Without sugar the cake doesn’t taste good. Too much flour, the cake is chalky and no one eats it. Too much sugar and the cake is too sweet and no one eats it.

To be successful, an athlete needs the right blend of speed work, endurance work, stamina work, recovery, strength training, sleep, nutrition, etc. 

Quality coaches understand the needs to balance training loads.

A great coaches, like Percy Cerutty, become fluent in how to do this.

Cerutty’s response to the question “How Should Runners Train?” in the book How They Train Vol. 1 is also an apt response to the question of how to best develop stamina:

Condition yourself over at least three years. Become strong all over. Train 3 days a week to exhaustion, rest or run easier on the other days. Run a lot of the speed at you wish to race as well as a little faster. Run repeat 100s, 200s, 400s, 800s, and 1200s at these speeds as able. Get the organism drilled to running at these speeds and flat out until exhausted. Reduce recovery time to a mere nothing as the intensive training goes on. Run a lot of over-distance work for continuity of effort. If you do all of this regularly, the times will come.

As you can see, there are no shortcuts to become a better runner. A runner cannot ignore the need to be patient, persistent, and consistent.

There’s no need to hurry the process, instead just trust it.

Any questions?  Direct Message me on twitter.
Thx for reading. | jm