Re-thinking the Miles

We have commonly attempted to try to hit a certain amount of miles to determine our success as runners when training for any distance of a race. I’ve had that thought too, thinking at times needing to hit 40 miles/week for a full or hitting 25 miles/week for a half is going to be indicative of hitting a personal best.  As much as this is a simple way of achieving our goals, sometimes it overlooks many of the other aspects of training and it might be good to try out a new training process when planning for your next race.

Counting miles is easy. We can map out routes and increase mileage easier. What counting miles unfortunately does is ignore the quality of total running distance, on paper. Running 6 miles on a training day can constitute significant differences in the total amount of foot strikes per session and accumulated of “ground and pound” forces on the body; this can matter greatly whether you’re feeling fatigued or fresh. Counting miles can make you at times feel stressed, especially closer to race day; you might feel the need to hit that dreaded 20 miler, 2-4 weeks before race day. These factors can affect your recovery and stress cycles necessary to feel race-ready.

So what do we do about this? Well, in group settings, counting miles is definitely a great way to maintain our social distancing! Running in groups can keep each other safe, accountable, and can be extremely motivating which can help you feel like you’ve accomplished miles as a team, and it is much easier to accommodate at all levels. If you’re running solo, a good start would be to count how many minutes you’ve ran over your weekly mileage and reflect on how fatigued you might have been throughout the week. Ask yourself how you felt during the week? Did you feel fresh each run? Did you feel tired deep into runs? Were you able to chat with your running partner during the run? As great as GPS watches can help guide how much time you spend into low, moderate, or high your workloads are, at times it can be inaccurate, thus it becomes difficult to completely rely on your wrist to keep track of how good it feels. This might help couple your quality of runs with your total time on your feet and keep your runs more fresh and fun on both ends.

Stay strong,

Evan

References

1) Pacquette M, Napier C, Willy R, and Stellingwerff T. Moving beyond weekly “distance” – Optimizing quantification of training load in Runners. Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy. 2020; 1-20.

2) Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB. Monitoring the athlete response: Subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: A systematic review. British journal of sports medicine. 2016; 50: 281-291.

Social Distancing and Injury Prevention

With all the amounts of social distancing and stay-at-home orders in place especially for the non-essential workforce, there is a definite increase in the amount of runners and walkers out and about. With the increase in the amount of running done, there always poses the question: What do I do about (insert body part/injury here)? Here comes the age old PT-school answer: It depends! There are a number of factors that go into how and why people get hurt and it is not just about the uptick in mileage you may have seen in your training programs. Today, I want to discuss and review a few of the myths of training errors and talk about what are more attainable reasons for injury prevention.

10% rule

Thankfully this has continued to phase out through the year 2020, but there are some questions about the 10% rule I have heard from runners on their mileage each week. It’s pretty apparent with the most recent challenge presented that the 10% rule has not applied to a good majority of you.  There are studies that show that even increasing that rate by an average upward increase of 25% total mileage per week has shown no difference compared to 10% increase per mileage in increases in running-related injuries (RRIs)(1). Even after injury, if you’ve had a previous high amount of mileage, that 10% rule does not apply well to your return to run program; but do take notice to issues such as bone stress injuries (BSIs) as they tend to recur fairly easily. (2)

Stretching

Another question I’ve been asked prior to these crazy times is “What stretches am I missing or not doing for my tight (insert muscle group here)?” I don’t think that there needs to be a specific or group of static or dynamic stretching for your running gains. This goes to say that this is against any form of stretching at all. I find them to be extremely helpful…in times hours away from your run. It just does not add any effect to your performance prior or after your run. A more important aspect of “lengthening” a tissue is mainly through control through the motion, which resistance training, yoga, pilates, etc. can take you through. Besides, stretching itself is not really lengthening any sort of muscle tissue(3); if we were able to do that fairly easily with long term changes, we would see different muscular appearances on different people at a much more frequent sight. Don’t feel guilty about how your body feels if you don’t stretch, but don’t neglect attempting to warm up prior to your runs; whether it be warm up miles or getting those running drills in!

If there is anything to learn from these myths, as we want to be faster, running-loving individuals, we just have to make sure we don’t pull too many levers (speed, mileage with frequency or distance, strength training, perception of fatigue) all at once. Keep your easy runs easy; as in, make sure you feel like you can carry a conversation at said pace, sleep A LOT, and don’t feel bad if you have to miss out on one or two runs to recover.

The important thing about what you’ve seen with this read is that the more you continue to involve yourself with patience and consistency in showing up to run, it will be much easier to weather the storm in the event of injury or change in normalcy such as our new found daily lives. Hope you all are staying safe and strong out there. Congrats to everyone who has started finding a new love in running, exercising, and being creative with your daily lives!

Stay strong,

Evan

References

1) Damsted C, Glad S, Nielsen RO, Sorensen H, Malisoux L. Is there evidence for an association between changes in training load and running-related injuries? A systematic review. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2018. 13(6): 931-942.

2) Warden SJ, Davis IS, Fredericson M. Management and Prevention of Bone Stress Injuries in Long-Distance Runners. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2014. 44(10): 749-765.

3) Freitas SR, Mendes B, Le Sant G, Andrade RJ, Nordez A, Milanovic Z. Can chronic stretching change the muscle-tendon mechanical properties? A review. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2018. 28(3): 794-806.

Why Runners Should Lift Heavy and Smart

When I hear a runner talk about his or her cross-training during training season, I mostly hear cycling (stationary or road), high intensity interval training classes, pilates, or yoga. While those are great options, there’s another tool that tends to be overlooked or under-utilized is strength training. I’m not talking about lifting, but heavy lifting. Heavy strength training can be an effective tool before, during, and after training seasons. Some of these benefits include improving neuromuscular function, bone strength, and muscle/tendon resiliency. But when we even think about starting strength training, how do we start? Where do we start? How heavy do we start?

I have changed the way I viewed programming a program for any individual, and runners are no exception. Even with that, there are foundational movements that everyone should have: squat, hinge, push, pull, and carry. These movements should be made competent by any runner before adding any external load or made into any sort of variation. Any extra isolated movements could be included, such as a leg extension and/or a calf raise, which should be included, but only depending on specific assessments of the individual. 

Now the bigger question is: where do I start? If you have a difficult time finding out a goal of how strong you would need to be, a good goal would be to be able to get at least their body weight with any sort of squat or deadlift variation for 5 reps, but just like how we started running, there should be a steady progression of external loading and sometimes these could take weeks to progress. But just like running, don’t try to lose your gains after a race, otherwise, it’ll be just as hard to return to form!

Thanks for reading and stay strong!

- Evan

Welcome!

Coach Evan here! My goal of this blog is to provide runners at all levels with valuable information to help you enjoy running. There is a world of information out about what to do, what not to do, what the best type of running form or shoe is, etc, etc. Hopefully what I can do is to help you provide information that makes sense of it all and not get overwhelmed with all that you may have heard or seen. Please let me or any of us at SHRC know on anything specific you would want to learn about. We’re all here to help each other meet our fitness goals! Happy running!

- Evan