What Is The Minimum Amount Of Run Training?

[Mat Hudson]

What Is The Minimum Amount Of Run Training?

For those of you with a real life, job, relationships and other responsibilities, you may wonder how much training you must do to get some pleasing results.

You do have a lot work and other important matters in life going on. Some weeks, you may experience a conflict in time and energy with this run training schedule. Running is probably less important and that is quite OK. 

Let me offer some perspective on our training plan…

We may be fit in a general way, with general aerobic capacity built up through other fitness modalities, but the muscular demands of running and the supporting sub-systems are very specific to the act of running. Nothing gets us in shape for running better than running.

For those of you building up to 13.1 mile capacity for the first time, or rebuilding after being away from this kind of distance for a while, your running-specific muscles and neural system needs time to get reconditioned to the running motion and to sustain that motion for 2+ hours. It is not the big muscles that need help – for those are likely getting good workouts in your other fitness activities – it is all the smaller supporting muscles and tissues around the joint and in the specific arrangement required by this new technique that are weak and unprepared to hold up for 13.1 miles. When those give up, your form is lost and your body will be searching for other (old) ways to support itself to finish the race.

It is likely that all of you could survive and finish 13.1 miles right now, but the more mindful conditioning you get in, the more comfortable that distance will be, and the lower the risk you have for hurting some part of your body.

Not only are you building strength around the running motion, you are strengthening around a new movement pattern for running. The priority of your training at this stage is to build robust neural circuits for superior form that will be able to hold up to the stresses of 2+ hours of continuous work.

There are 4 run sessions assigned per week. The long distance is definitely the highest priority in terms of conditioning those smaller, weaker muscles of your new movement pattern and preparing the whole muscle groups to work together continuously. If you know you will be pooped out from other training/work during the week, plan this longer run at a time after a rest day, when you feel fairly fresh.

For the other 3 sessions, those are shorter distances and you can adjust the physical intensity to fit what energy you have available (including the recovery time you need afterward before the next session). But they still provide a vital part of building stronger neural circuits for those movement patterns. Your best attention is still required to stimulate their growth.

If life urges you to cut out one of these training sessions, sacrifice a shorter run, but don’t sacrifice the longer run. They are providing you not only a gradually increasing conditioning experience, they are giving you feedback on how prepared you really are for race day.

In general, this run training plan is designed on a minimal mileage schedule. And, we are cutting it short with only 10 weeks of training. So, you need every mindful mile of running you can get in, with respect to your work life and higher priorities. Again, the intention here is to invest in neural and specific muscle conditioning now in order to reduce the discomfort on race day, which frees up energy to perform better. 

I want to encourage you to spend these weeks investing in this minimal run conditioning plan, and then you will be able to enjoy some higher, more pleasurable level of running that may not require as much intensity to maintain afterward.

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