By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
SARA HALL experienced an instructive epiphany in 2006. In the fall, she’d won the national road-running championship for 5K (3.1 miles), a distance she specialized in at Stanford. At the time, she considered herself a 5K runner. So did everyone else.
Sara Hall, an aspiring Olympian runner, trains at UC Riverside by running speed drills around the lap.
Multimedia
Hall takes an ice bath after her daily exercise regimen to help with muscle recovery between training sessions.
A few weeks later, everything changed when she won the Fifth Avenue Mile in New York, a glamour event in American road racing. “Afterward, I thought, ‘That’s my distance,’ ” she said. “It plays to my strengths. I loved the fast pace. I’m not a patient runner.”
Today, Hall, 25, is laser-focused on training for the 1,500 meters (0.93 mile) in hopes of making the United States Olympic team in middle distance running.
She and her coach, Terrence Mahon, who also coaches Hall’s husband, Ryan Hall, the winner of the United States Olympic team men’s marathon trial, have increased her speed work and reconfigured how much she’s running and her intensity.
“Her work capacity has gone through the roof,” Mahon said, and she can run greater distances faster than ever before. Which makes her current regimen a good model for how recreational runners — not just the elite — can get swifter and sharper, and perhaps even decide that they have been racing the wrong distance all along.
SPEED THRILLS
“I’m not running as far these days,” Hall said, compared with the distances she ran in high school and college. That might come as a surprise to anyone who learns that her average weekly mileage remains 85 to 90 (compared with her husband’s 140-plus). A typical training week includes easy running on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (usually twice a day). Hall, who can run almost a four-minute mile, lopes through these 30- or 50-minute workouts at a leisurely mile pace of 7 minutes. (To accurately figure her mile splits, she wears a watch equipped with G.P.S.) On Saturday, she takes a 14-mile run at a pace (5 minutes 45 seconds per mile) that is between what she runs in races and her easy days.
Then there are the fast, hard interval sessions at a track on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These hurt because they are supposed to. “You stress the body to get it to adapt” to the mechanical and physiological demands of speed, Mahon said. A typical Tuesday session includes two miles of warm-up, six miles of intervals and three miles of cool-down.
Anyone not aiming for an Olympic qualifying time should adjust speed-training mileage downward, Mahon said. “Go to a track and run a mile flat-out” and record your time, he said. Your ideal pace for a 5K race would be around 95 percent as fast per mile. Then implement what Mahon calls “over-speed and under-speed training.” In over-speed, you sprint through quarter-miles, 800 meters and other intervals at a speed faster than your 5K pace (close to your top mile time). Don’t run more than two fast miles.
For under-speed work, time your interval splits to be a little slower than your 5K pace, with shorter rest periods than those within the over-speed intervals. Total mileage can be four to six miles. Cool down with a gentle jog of about half your total interval distance.
Try sprinting one week, and running slower the next or, if you’re an experienced racer, both in separate sessions in a week. Don’t, despite its discomforts, worm out of speed work. “The most common mistake” that recreational runners make, Mahon said, “is running the same pace all the time.” Occasionally making yourself run fast, he said, “is the only way to make yourself a fast runner.”
STRIDE RIGHT
Hall kicks like a mule when she runs. She’s trying to stop. “This year, we’ve been totally focused on my form,” she said. “I tend to lean forward and I have a big back kick.” This slightly toppling stance lessens the power of her strides, and also has made her prone to being tripped up from behind during races.
- 1
- 2 <-for more info
No comments:
Post a Comment