Transcription
The popularity of running is on the rise, and you may well have caught the bug. So, whether you're training for your first or trying to improve on your last, here is how you can improve your half marathon. I'm going to break this down into six strategies that you can utilize and implement relative to your own ambitions and experience, so that we can all improve our half marathons together. For context, I most recently used these strategies to run a 1:24 half marathon alongside my focus on strength training. Let's get into it.
So, the first thing to consider is to have realistic expectations, because there's a lot of arbitrary goals that we can get swept up with out there. So, whether it's a sub-2.5-hour half marathon, sub-2, sub-1:45, even sub-90, we've got these sort of societal expectations on what we deem a good outcome. But remember that good is completely relative to your ability, your journey, your own ambitions, your own goals. And comparison is ultimately the thief of joy. So, you should try and make realistic expectations within that context, rather than an arbitrary societal context, in my opinion. So, focus on the smaller steps that you can implement now, rather than the daunting goals that will come further down the line. This is very much part of a journey over destination process, where you need to get comfortable week by week, adapting to the running volume, adapting to the running intensity, and understanding more about yourself as you go. It's important to remember that running is a skill. You most likely wouldn't just turn up to a tattoo studio with an elaborate, complex piece of artwork and say, "Yes, I'm going to happily start tattooing that on this stranger here." No, you would commit the time to learning and developing the skills, so that you can build your confidence to apply it to the outcome required. Running is no different. Whilst it might seem a little simpler because it's something that kind of we've grown up doing potentially, and something that we see a lot around us, it is still a skill, needs to be respected, needs to be developed, and needs to be approached with patience. Half marathon volume will, for sure, test you. So, it is important to be sensible, rather than just sending it every single day. So, to round out this point, the most important thing to consider is you, the individual. What are your goals? What are your ambitions? What do you want to achieve? What's your training history? What's your height? What's your weight? What's your ability? All of these things, and use that as the foundation to build from, rather than, "My friend in accounting ran a sub-1:45 half marathon, therefore that's what I'd like to do," because that person in accounting, Steve, let's call him, may well have been running for 10 years longer than you have. Take myself as an example. I weigh about 205 pounds, 93-94 kilos give or take. As I still have a huge focus on strength training, I've come from a rugby and a powerlifting background, and that muscle mass, that strength output is still important to me. Running is very important to me as well, but it means I've accepted within my individual context, I am probably never going to run a sub-15-minute 5k or a sub-1:15 half, shall we say. Very pleased to have run a 1:24 recently, but at the end of the day, we can only work within the context that we're given. We can obviously have an impact on that over time, but that's where the journey over the destination, and the work, and the adaptation, and the time becomes the thing that matters most.
So, the second point to consider is to slow it down, speed it up, and to sit in the middle. By this, I mean it's important to establish varied effort levels and to understand how they should be implemented in your training. You may well have heard of the 80/20 rule, which is that 80% of your training should be easy and 20% should be hard. But this can be quite difficult to understand and implement from the get-go if you're just getting into running. But what we can do is we can establish varied effort levels or parameters, so that we know when we should be running easy, when we should be running hard, how long for, etc., etc., and use that to build out a sensible training plan that's progressive towards our own individual ambitions, based on our experience. So, what I think is worth doing at this point is heading back to the office to break this down in a bit more detail. So, if you're training for a half marathon, you should likely be able to run for 30 minutes or more, which unfortunately, in this case, is bad news. Exactly why, we'll come on to shortly. So, to establish our effort levels for specific training, I'm a huge fan of using a lactate heart rate threshold test to determine our LTHR training zones. This is in favor of 220 minus age, because that is as reliable as it is unreliable, and isn't specific to you, the individual, and your performance data. We can determine our LTHR with the following test: head out for a 30-minute max distance run, and when you hit 10 minutes, hit lap on your watch, so that you can take the final 20 minutes average heart rate and average pace to determine your lactate heart rate threshold training zones, which are as follows. From here, you can determine how much time you want to spend in each pacing or heart rate zone, depending on your goals. But for the vast majority of us, we should spend most of that time in zone 2 aerobically. Unfortunately, I can't prescribe in general terms for those of you watching. But as a general week of half marathon training, here is an example based on 42 km of running. So, let's break down four runs within the context of a week. Starting with Monday, some zone 5 intervals. Something like a 2k warm-up into 6x400m with equal static rest between efforts, followed by a 2km cool-down. You can work this sort of rep range anywhere from 200m up to 2km reps, trying to keep your general volume quite concentrated. You don't want to be doing 15km of really hard effort work. But the work that you are meant to be doing should be tough. You should be top end of zone 4, low end of zone 5, working really quite hard. It's important to mention that intervals do take time to get used to, as there's a lot of impact going through your lower body. So, do please make sure that you ease into them, and that you're ready to take them on, rather than just getting straight in at the deep end, having never done much running before, and going straight into intervals. Approach them with caution, but they're a very useful tool when used correctly. Wednesday, some zone 3/zone 4 tempo work. Something like a 2k warm-up into 7km at zone 3/zone 4, into a 2k cool-down. Thursday, very simple one, 10km easy run, low intensity, steady state, all zone 2. And then Saturday, another simple one, the long run of the week, 15km easy, all zone 2. Within the context of that week, that brings the total amount of easy work to 33km, and the total amount of hard work to 9.4km, which works out at about an 80/20 split. And whilst these are quite figurative, and that's a very generalized sort of demonstrative example, that is an example of how the 80/20 rule that you may have heard of applies in this situation. But the general principle is that the vast majority of your foundational and base work should be done in zone 2. And then you layer in the moderate intensity zone 3, zone 4 work with lower volume overall. And then you layer in again, with even less volume, the harder effort, high zone 4, low zone 5 stuff. As a general rule with your lactate heart rate threshold data, which you should probably retest every sort of 6 to 8 weeks if you're working through a half marathon training block, you can loosely work to the idea that your high zone 3, low zone 4 pacing is something that you could go at your half marathon with. As you become a little bit more experienced and conditioned, you can probably work towards the higher end of zone 4. But if you're more of a relative beginner, and you're working towards your first half marathon, or maybe improving on your first one, then you're probably going to be more towards high zone 3, low zone 4. But the most important thing is to have some sort of a zone system. Whether it's LTHR, or whether it's simply rate of perceived exertion, or if you do want to work off a different heart rate training system, that's absolutely fine. The important thing is to have one, so that you can use it to strategically plan your training, and then strategically plan your race.
Okay, back to the track. So, the third thing to consider is to get out of your own way. And by that, I simply mean it's time to get some skin in the game. As human beings, we have a tendency to put things off. We have tendencies to wonder, "What if? What could be? I will do X when Y occurs," or whatever it might be. So, the biggest stumbling block to your half marathon progress could well actually be yourself. So, I am a huge proponent of getting some skin in the game, booking in that event, booking in that date, and then working backwards from there, because you've got a timeline, you've got some pressure, you've got some accountability to your friends, to your family, to Steve in accounting. And that means that you can then start to get to work, learn as you go, develop the skill, understand and implement your zones, and move towards an improved or first half marathon.
The fourth thing to consider is the importance of having a plan. Because if you don't, you could justifiably turn up to the track on a lovely day like today, and just do what I'm doing: "One gin and tonic, please." Improving your time over any running distance, or perhaps hitting one for the first time, comes down to making progression sensibly over time, and not just absolutely going hell for leather from day one. Because hard work is not going to be the only thing that gets you there. Smart work is going to be what gets you there. We're looking to balance the right amount of volume and intensity across the week, and to progress those steadily and cautiously over time towards our event. Without a specific plan, as I experienced when I was younger, it can be quite easy to just default to the funner, faster stuff, and to forget about the easier base aerobic work that is the foundation of all of your fitness. In reality, it can be quite easy to fall into the trap of "shiny object syndrome," where you say yes to this group run, or that track session, or running x amount of miles over the weekend, and before you know it, your carbs are screaming at you, your physio bills are through the roof, and you're wondering where it all went wrong. Sensible, cautious, and predictable progressions really do underpin training towards anything, really. And even more importantly, we all lead busy lives. We want to remove the friction that comes from thinking and planning, where it's easier to just know what you're doing on what day, and then it's up to you to dial that in and make it work, and learn when you need to shuffle things around, what time you can get to the track, what time you need to do your long runs, etc., etc. Fear not, I have good news, because at Omnia Performance, we have a wide variety of half marathon focused training plans, and lots of other distance focused training plans, in fact. So, if you would like more information on what those look like, and access some of the finest hybrid training plans available on the planet, then check out the link in the description down below. But putting my obviously enormous bias to the side for one moment, whether it's from us, or whether it's from somebody else, the important thing is that you know what you're doing, why you're doing it, that you're training intentionally, and that you have predictable, sensible, cautious progressions building up over time towards your event, which you have some skin in the game on, don't you?
The fifth thing to consider is strength training. And I am firmly of the belief that if you are beginner, intermediate, or advanced, it has a place in your training. If you're just getting into running, then better understanding your biomechanics through some strength training is going to have a huge carryover to how you move your body, how you understand your gait, and how you can make improvements over time. It's going to reinforce structural integrity and just make you a little bit more resilient overall, and can potentially prevent injury. If you're intermediate, you can start working in things like heavier compound movements, single leg work, stuff that's a little bit more applicable to running. In general terms, from a strength and conditioning point of view, you're going to strengthen your tendons, you're going to strengthen your ligaments, and you're going to improve your bone density. All that sort of good general well-being stuff that goes with strength training as well. If you're a bit more advanced, then you can maybe look to actually progress your strength and endurance training concurrently, like I like to do. Obviously, there's a bit of a bell curve where if you're trying to run a sub-1:10 half marathon, or really get close to that 1-hour mark, you're going to have less and less time to allocate for strength training in place of volume. But overall, I do genuinely believe that everybody should have some sort of strength training, because strength is never a weakness. Quick myth to dispel before we get back to the track: that if you are strength training to support your running, then you should not, I repeat, not be doing low-weight, high-rep, because that mimics running. You are getting lots of low-weight, high-rep work out there whilst you're running, because running is a load-bearing movement pattern, and you're doing a lot of repetitions with every step, stride that occurs. Instead, you should be focusing on strength training for the sake of developing strength, which is higher weight, lower rep work. If you're doing strength training to make you a better runner, then you should be filling the gaps that you don't currently get from your running, which is that strength component at that end of the fitness and training spectrum. You're covered at this end with the aerobic and the tempo and the sub-threshold stuff that we've already spoken about, but this end is where we're lacking. So, we shouldn't be getting into the gym and trying to mimic this end of that spectrum with weights, because that doesn't actually yield any real return. Again, I can't be prescriptive in terms of reps, sets, exercises, because there's such a wide variety of you watching, but I do believe that you should look into some form of strength training to supplement your running from a strength and conditioning point of view, because it is going to improve your running overall.
Let's head back to the track. So, point number six isn't as much about what we do on the pitch, so to speak, but rather what we do off it. We all know the importance of recovery in a general training setting, but if you're training for a faster or your first half marathon, it becomes even more important. The most fundamental component of recovery is not doing too much training in the first place. And that's why it's so important to have sensible progressive training plans, to strengthen your stride, and to make sure that you establish and adhere to your effort levels. As we've already discussed in this video, I am now at risk of sounding like your mother, but I have to emphasize the importance of sleep, hydration, and nutrition as the other core components that really underpin recovery. All of these gimmicks, all of these massage guns, compression boots, infrared sauna, cold plungey things, are all the grains of sand at the top of a much more basic and foundational pyramid. Your training volume, your sleep, your hydration, your nutrition, and your just life stress and management in general are the sort of five principles that I think you should try and focus on controlling as much as you can to maximize your recovery. Only once you've optimized all of those things can you really start looking at the sort of grains of sand, the 0.1% benefit things at the top, even though those tend to be getting a lot more screen time and focus in the modern world. The principles and the basics are what matter most. So, please do remember that we all live different circumstances. We all have different body shapes. We all have different climates. So, I'm not going to be too prescriptive in terms of what you should be eating, how much you should be eating, what you should be drinking, how much you should be drinking, when you should be going to bed, etc., etc., if you have a newborn versus you're a 21-year-old at university. Very, very different lives, and we have a wide range of people that watch this channel. So, I don't want to be overly prescriptive, but what you can do if you are interested in getting a bit more insight into how much you should be eating, we have a calorie calculator down below in the link in the description that you can access. And then you even get access to a free consultation call with our in-house performance nutritionist, Tom McClure. No pressure, no sales, just an opportunity for you to ask him questions on how much you should be eating, why you should be eating that much, so that you can support your training. And he will be more than happy to help. And here is, in fact, a comment from somebody reinforcing exactly that.
So, there we have it. Those are six strategies that you can implement to improve your half marathon. And if you do have a race coming up, please do let us know in the comments down below so we can all hype you up and wish you the very best. If you do have any questions on anything that I've said, drop them.
Hello, this is me back at the office, as we realize that the microphone actually died midway towards the end of the video. I'm probably yapping about commenting down below and hitting subscribe whilst you're there, and dinging that little bell icon whilst you're in the vicinity. So, if you'd happily and kindly do all of those things, that would be much appreciated. Trying to time this with the end of the video visually, but don't know how I'm getting on. So, I'm probably just going to say goodbye. Thanks for watching.