Fix My Running

Planning on doing a marathon this year?

Hansons Marathon Method tosses out mega-long runs and high-mileage weekends—two old-fashioned running traditions that often injure and discourage runners. Runners using the Hansons method will gradually build-up to the moderate-high mileage required for marathon success, spreading those miles more sensibly throughout the week. Running easy days mixed with precisely paced speed, strength, and tempo workouts, runners will steel their bodies and minds to run the hardest final miles of the marathon—and finish strong.

Luke Humphrey, Running Coach and the Author of Hansons Marathon Method joins me on the show today to tell us all about this novel approach to marathon training.

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These training zone calculators help you determine your individualized training zones for running. We use three field tests that you can do with just a GPS watch or a running app on your phone and a heart rate monitor. We take the results from those three field tests to determine your specific training zones and track the effectiveness of your training.

Full show notes for this episode including a written outline of all three field tests

YouTube Video of this episode

Training Zone Calculator Spreadsheet

Firstly, the 20-minute test will estimate your second lactate threshold heart rate and pace (LT2). We use this test to determine your training zones. Repeating this test every 4-8 weeks will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your training at improving your race pace.

Secondly, the 40-minute test will estimate your first lactate threshold pace (LT1). Repeating this test every 4-8 weeks will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your training at improving your aerobic base.

Finally, the 5-minute test will estimate your VO2 max pace and help you set targets for interval workouts. Repeating this test every 4-8 weeks will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your training at improving your top-end speed.

By repeating these tests regularly you can track your fitness gains. Improvements in all three tests over time indicate an improvement in fitness and are likely to result in improved performance on race day. If you notice one of the tests is not improving, that would indicate an area of weakness. Targeting that aspect of your physiology would be an excellent way to optimize your training.

Nowadays most runners know that including strength training in their program is likely to improve their performance. However, most runners aren't actually doing any strength training, and those that are may not be seeing the benefits they hoped for. In order to help runners optimize their strength training, I invited Rich Blagrove, author of the book Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Running, to join me on the show today. 

I asked my listeners to submit their questions for Rich. Most of the questions revolved around the practicalities of including strength training in an already busy schedule. To help with this I have created a strength training plan based on the advice Rich provided in this episode. You can download the plan here. 

Rich Blagrove, PhD is a Physiology Lecturer at Loughborough University, where he also heads up the Master's programme for Strength and Conditioning. He is an active researcher and lead author of influential papers looking at strength training and endurance performance, including Strength and Conditioning for Adolescent Endurance Runners (2020) and Effects of Strength Training on the Physiological Determinants of Middle- and Long-Distance Running Performance: A Systematic Review (2018). In 2015, Rich published the book Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Running and followed that up in 2021 with the book The Science and Practice of Middle and Long Distance Running.

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This episode is part of the Running Fundamentals Course. A free online course to help runners understand the foundations of running performance. Just click the link to get the full course sent to your inbox.

Running Fundamentals Course

Have you ever wondered why the running heart rate zones on your GPS watch or running app seem way off? So, for example, you feel like you’re running at an easy pace but your watch tells you you’re in zone 5?

What are these heart rate zones for anyway?

This might seem like a small problem, but it leads runners to feel confused and lose confidence in their training. If your heart rate zones seem way off, there is a good chance you will ignore them. That’s a shame because heart rate zones are incredibly helpful for improving your training. In fact, you can also use pace zones to really step up the quality of your workouts. However, if your zones are not calibrated correctly, they will do more harm than good.

So, in this episode, I intend to answer the following questions…

Cool stuff mentioned in the show

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There is certainly no shortage of "advice" out there about running form. If your social media habits are anything like mine, you can't scroll down your feed more than two or three times without seeing some video or image depicting "bad running form" or "good running form" or some sort of transition between the two. Heck, I've put up quite a number of these posts myself!

BUT! What does the evidence say? What aspects of running form have been shown to influence running performance? What about injury rates?

These are very important factors to consider before you start messing around with your running technique. Today we are joined by the one and only Tom Goom, aka The Running Physio. Many of you will be familiar with Tom, over the last decade he has gained quite a reputation for his ability to translate running injury research into easy-to-digest messages. Tom teaches clinicians all over the world through his Running Repairs Courses and has written for Running Fitness, Men’s Running UK, the British Journal of Sports Medicine and the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. His website, Running-Physio.com is the go-to resource for clinicians and runners who want to know what the science actually says about running injury management.

To put it simply, there is no one better positioned to give us a "thousand-foot view" on running form research. You will leave this episode with some very clear takeaways about what is important (and not important) when it comes to running technique.

Click here to check out the full show notes

00:00 Who is Tom Goom?

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Are you confused by Training Zones? Me too!

There are many different systems out there that you can use to determine your training zones. These can be based on heart rate, pace, power, speed, effort. There are systems with 2 zones, 3 zones, 5 zones, 7 zones and even 11 zones! How are we to make sense of this?

Well, we need to ask the question, what do all of these zones have in common? What are the primary physiological markers that these zones use as a starting point? My guest today is an expert on this topic. Nick Jankovskis is a Sports Scientist with a fantastic YouTube channel through which he shares his vast knowledge of physiology in easy-to-understand bite-sized videos.

Nick joins me on the show today to help us make some sense of training zones and how we can use them to maximize the effectiveness of our training.

DIscussed in this episode

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Periodization is an idea that has been around since the middle of the 20th century. If you listen to other endurance-themed podcasts like this one, I'm sure you have come across it before. The basic concept revolves around structuring your annual training in such a way as to have you "peak" for a specific event or series of events. In order to achieve this, many great coaches have adopted styles of training that involve focusing on specific areas of fitness at different times. Over the years, different methods of periodization have evolved, you may have heard about linear, traditional, non-linear, block and other methods of periodization.

Personally, I've read quite a bit about these methods over the years in a quest to improve my own training. I wanted to bring my guest on the show today to discuss these methods and how we could implement them as self-coached athletes. However, what emerged was an interesting discussion on the practical application of these training philosophies when applied to the real-world recreational athlete.

Craig Schmitt is a Physiotherapist, Triathlon Coach and Kona-qualifying Ironman triathlete. Said another way, Craig is a lot like me, only better, by every metric. However, I tried to set my jealousy aside for the interview and I hope you'll agree that it was well worth the effort. Craig is a wealth of practical information for the recreational endurance athlete. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

In this interview, I asked Craig

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Hitting the wall is an experience most runners and triathletes are familiar with. Sometimes it's mild. Your energy feels totally drained and you want to stop. You may be able to continue but you have to slow your pace down drastically. Other times it can be a complete disaster. You crumple to the ground and wait for death. Sometime later, you seem to regain enough composure to stagger home or call someone to come get you.

So what's going on when we "hit the wall"? How come some days you can run 20km at 5:30 pace and feel on top of the world, whereas other days you get to 10km and feel like you're going to pass out? The question is: Why do we run out of energy?

In order to help us answer this question, we need to understand where our body gets the energy we use to run. For the most part, we burn glucose and fatty acids to produce the energy required for muscular contractions. We discussed that in detail in our episode on energy systems. In order to get the glucose and fatty acids to the muscles, we need to eat. Essentially, this is fuelling our training.

Most of us are familiar with some aspects of fuelling. We eat gels and sports drinks and sometimes force-feed ourselves excessive amounts of pasta in the days prior to a race. However, if we're honest, we're not exactly sure what we're doing. We don't really know why we eat certain foods, how many gels we need for a race, how much sports drink to gulp down on a training run. We are in luck though, my guest today is an expert in this area and he's going to make it really simple for us.

Dr. Bob Murray is an Exercise Physiologist and the founder of Sports Science Insights. After beginning his career as a University Professor he went on to become the director of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, a position he held for 23 years. Dr. Murray recently published a review in Nutrition Reviews entitled Fundamentals of glycogen metabolism for coaches and athletes. This gives an excellent overview of the science behind an athletes diet and the fuelling strategies required to optimize training.

In this episode, we will answer the questions...

Click here to read the full show notes

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Every runner gets injured at some point. Estimates on how often runners get injured vary, depending on which study you read. In any given year it is estimated that your risk of getting injured is somewhere between 20 and 80%. Many studies settle on an estimate somewhere in the middle, around 50-60%. Now, don't quote me on the math here as statistics are definitely not my thing, but doesn't that mean in any given year each runner has a 1 in 2 chance of getting injured? And that we can expect to get injured every other year? That seems like a lot!

It certainly seems that way on the ground. Every runner I talk to usually has some sort of niggle that they are hoping won't get any worse, or they are just getting going again after some time off due to injury. Personally, I was ravaged by injury in my first 5 years of running. So what causes running injuries? According to a 2014 study, most runners attribute injuries to “not stretching,” “excess of training,” “not warming up,” “lack of strength,”  ... “wearing the wrong shoes.” ...“not respecting the body's limitations” and “foot-type changes.” (Saragiotto 2014)

So are they right? Are these the things that actually cause running injuries?

My guest today is Dr. Jason Tuori. Jason is a Physical Therapy Resident at The University of Rochester, NY. He is a Board Certified Sports Clinical Specialist and a USA Track & Field certified running coach. Jason is also an avid runner, competing regularly in distances ranging from 800m to the marathon. More than this, Jason is a self-confessed running nerd. He has gained a reputation for getting into the weeds of running-related research and joins me on the show today to help us understand what the current science actually says about running injuries. If we can figure out what causes running injuries, perhaps we'll be better equipped to avoid them!

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In a previous episode, we examined the energy systems using a story about my cousin and I in a 5k race. Now, I don’t want to seem too self-centred, so in this story, I will not be the protagonist. Instead, we’ll invent a new runner…Carri. We’re going to examine Carri’s performance in the 10k and how it relates to her lactate threshold. Then we’ll discuss how Carri can alter her training in order to improve her lactate threshold pace and beat her 10k PR.

Carri is 37 years old and a big fan of 10k races. She’s done many over the years but has always struggled to get her time under 1 hour. This is a really common barrier. In fact, a 2020 study showed that the average finish time for the 10k in the US is 01:01:00. That’s 1 hour and 1 minute! Very frustrating. As it happens, 1 hour and 1 minute is Carri’s PR for the 10k. It’s been the same for 5 years now.

Carri has set her sights on breaking the 1-hour barrier. She’s got 4 months until her goal race so she feels like it’s realistic. First up, she’s going to do a time trial to see where she’s at right now...

Click here to read the full in-depth article that accompanies this episode

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