Find Consistency With Minor Changes

By Pete Rea/ZAP Fitness/Running Journal/April 2009

The late Oscar Wilde once said that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Wilde was not a runner. Despite participating in a sport where tinkering, tweaking, and schedule flexibility can be key to health and progression, the one quality virtually all top endurance athletes share is consistency. Month after month of healthy consistent training trumps short term large jumps in volume or intensity nine times out of 10. Despite the need for consistency, many athletes find similar training cycles year after year to be more than slightly drudgerous, often putting athletes into intermittent ruts.

This month’s “Learning from the Young Guns” will focus on ways for you to address both the consistency you require for improvement and health along with the equally important variety in your running, for I believe (unlike Wilde) that consistency and the imaginative need not be mutually exclusive.

Change Your Venue

For 10 years I have been promoting the psychological benefits of utilizing numerous training venues, rather than hitting the same park or road loops day after day. While a small change such as doing your tempo run in a different neighborhood, your long run in a new park, or your track session at a different school, may seem inconsequential -- you would indeed be surprised at how refreshing this small change can be.

Mask Your Session (a Rose by any other name)

We are creatures of habit, as much as any on earth. And because we are drawn into habits, we as runners are commonly drawn toward the same type of workouts throughout the year: 400-meter repeats for intervals, four-mile flat steady runs for tempo, 800-meter pick-ups for speed based endurance and so on. Much the way we do our best to implement some freshness in training by finding new venues, we also change the look of training each cycle so athletes can achieve similar physiological needs without getting bogged down in the same workouts year round. Below are some suggestions:

* Common Workout -- 10x400m -- * Alternative Suggestion -- effort based pick-ups of 1:30/1:15/1:00 @ 95% effort on a flat or even slightly downhill segment w/ 60 seconds between pick-ups and 3:00-4:00 between sets (try three sets).

* Common Workout -- 4/5 mile tempo run -- * Alternative Suggestion -- mile repeats with short rest (75 seconds or less). Physiologically there is virtually no difference between the two. It is important in this segment to keep your heart rate between 85% - 90% of max (steady but not all out).

* Common Workout --Longer Moderate Sub-Threshold run (80%) of 40:00-45:00 -- * Alternative Suggestion -- moderate (30 sec. per mile slower than current 10K race pace) pick-ups of 5:45 – 4:45 – 3:45 – 2:45 – 1:45 - :45 x 2 sets w/75 seconds between each.
As you can plainly see, the above sessions are just like your favorites, but simply masked as something new. Once again, the main idea here is giving athletes a fresh look at their training. Former World Mile record holder Filbert Bayi of Tanzania once said “I have done the same training sessions hundreds of times, and yet none were the same.”

Expand Your “Week”

Seven days is a fairly narrow window to achieve all of your training needs. Most of our ZAP Fitness athletes arrive here from college with a schedule like this -- Sunday (long run) -- Monday (hard intervals) -- Tuesday (easy running) -- Wednesday (tempo run) -- Thursday (medium long run) -- Friday (easy running) -- Saturday (race). As you can see this type of week leaves little time for recovery between intense sessions, and can commonly lead to injury. Upon graduating from college many of our athletes expand their week to 10 days -- leaving more time between intense workouts, and as such improvements are quick in coming. Try thinking of your typical week outside the normal “seven-day” box. Do you have the flexibility for a long run on a Tuesday, or a tempo run on a Saturday? If so, perhaps this small change could keep each of you healthier and more consistent -- and we all know where that leads … PRS!

I want to be very clear regarding my intention with this piece. My goal is by no means for any of you to inherently change your training (unless of course you have gone years without improvement). In fact, to the contrary, I am encouraging all of you to be “year in and year out” consistent. Too often I, and my fellow coaches, have found that most runners do not give their program time enough to see results, but rather change their training as often as their socks. My intention is simply for you to inject some freshness within your consistency. Paradoxically changing your training in a variety of small ways (venues, masking workouts, and expanding your week to 8/9/10 days, can be effective ways to achieve these ends).

Calling All Economists

As I begin mapping some upcoming summer columns, I would like to ask you (Running Journal readers) for your thoughts as I dive into some finance-based research, an area outside my expertise. In recently looking at American Running Statistics dating back to the early 1960s, I noticed a direct link between hard economic times in America (specifically rates of unemployment), and upwardly surging distance running performances -- this is most glaring in the late 1970s and early 1980s when American Running was at its’ very best. My developing theory is akin to the larger enrollments in MBA, Law School, and service-related projects as times get tough. More on that later. Drop me an e-mail and give me your thoughts. My e-mail is marathonrea@aol.com.

ZAP Fitness is a Reebok and NY Road Runners Sponsored non-profit facility that supports post-collegiate distance runners in Blowing Rock, NC. ZAP puts on adult running camps during the summer and is available for retreats all year. The facility has a state of the art weight room, exercise science lab for testing and a 24-bed lodge. Coaches at the facility include 2 time Olympic Trials Qualifiers Zika Rea and Randy Ashley as well as head coach Pete Rea. For more information go to www.zapfitness.com or call (828) 295-6198.