Most people spend a lot of time building capacity – very few train expression.

The post Why Performance Fails appeared first on RunTeach.

But that’s all just a starting point and if you are interested in really improving your breathing then you are going to need a proven framework to help you get there.

Luckily for you, I’ve put such a framework together – and it offers you so much more than any other breathing course I’ve found. In fact, it’s a Respiratory Revolution!

Throughout this series of articles, you’ve learned about the importance of the biomechanic of breathing. Now, you’ll often hear a lot being said about strengthening your diaphragm and using it better in your breathing, but you’ve learned there are a lot more muscles involved in breathing other than your diaphragm.

Almost no one else will teach you that though, or how to actually activate those breathing muscles and your diaphragm so you can even start to strengthen them. A very high percentage of the runners I see really struggle to get even the smallest amount of activation, so how are they supposed to strengthen them and move the rib cage well to allow your diaphragm to work in the way it’s intended?

Being able to create and maintain a strong and stable breathing cylinder with a well mobilised rib cage is a fundamental and critical element of functional breathing for running, whether you are able to transition to nose breathing or not.

I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is, and most breathing courses and systems I’ve found only give this a cursory mention at best: they are missing out a crucial aspect to helping you breathe better when you run.

Calm and relaxed, but left behind…

In addition, as good as they are (and there are some amazing courses and systems available) most breathing courses you’ll come across are designed for the opposite of what you need as a runner. They teach you breathing techniques for relaxation, calm, and keeping your carbon dioxide levels low or within a level. This is fantastic for helping to reduce anxiety and bring in a calm mindfulness, but it just doesn’t help you functionally as a runner. Yes, there are elements of calm and relaxation that you need to bring to your running, and you certainly do need relaxed and well-paced breathing. 

But the reality is that as the duration and intensity of your running increases, you build up carbon dioxide in your cells and blood. If you do not learn to tolerate these higher levels, you’ll always need to slow down and you always risk inducing a feeling of panic and paradoxical breathing. This is what makes my framework different:

Functional breathing designed specifically for running

So with that, here is what you’ll learn on the RunTeach Respiratory Revolution breathing course for runners:

The Respiratory Revolution is an 8-week course, with each module becoming available

each week so you have plenty of time to practise without feeling rushed. In fact, as the course is self-paced, if it takes you 16 weeks or 20 weeks to complete, that’s absolutely fine. Once you have access to the course you have it – there is no time limit. This means you can refer back to the lessons and supporting material whenever you like.

The topics covered in the course are built on the elements that you learned about in the quick guide and articles:

• The Biomechanics Of Breathing
• The Biochemistry Of Breathing
• The Neurology Of Breathing

The topic include:

• Course introduction
• Assessments and benchmark
• Why breathing skills are needed for running well
• What is dysfunctional breathing?
• Diaphragm mobility
• Diaphragm strengthening
• The muscles of inhalation
• The muscles of exhalation
• Why nose-breathe? Discovering the benefits
• Nasal decongestion
• Learn to nose breathe and avoid the panic of air hunger
• Running specific breathing background and techniques
• Breathing Challenges throughout the course to help you learn to breathe better, more quickly

Every module has practical exercises designed to help you improve your breathing right from week 1.

There are also supporting lessons taking you through topics to help you get the most out of the course. For example, do you panic if you hold your breath? Well, I include techniques to help you get over this so that you can take full advantage of the breathing challenges and exercises.

So if you are ready to take the next step on your breathing journey, you can find the course here.

If you would prefer to work with me on a 1-2-1 basis to improve your breathing or other aspects of your running, you can contact me here.

The post Pulling it all together – A framework for better breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

I’ll present one case study here, and follow up with more over the coming weeks.

Firstly though, for the avoidance of doubt, tissue issues are real things. Strains, sprains, tears, breaks – they are very real and just because they may not always be associated with pain (but in most cases they are for the reasons mentioned in Part 1), if you are in any doubt whether you have a physical injury or not, then you need to get seen by a medically trained professional – ideally someone who has experience of dealing with active people and specifically runners.

OK, now we have established that, let’s start looking at some case studies where runners have come to me with painful knees, hamstrings, ankles, IT Band etc. In many cases they have had this pain for months and months, and a few of them have had the pain for years and have seen a wide variety of very well meaning professionals that have helped somewhat but not quite got to the source of the issue. I want to give you a high-level overview of how they presented, some of the things I tried; what didn’t work and then what did work (with varying degrees of success).

Runner 1: Outside of right knee very painful for the last three years.

Introduction

Runner 1, we’ll call him Jim as that’s not his name, came to me for a running assessment as he had been getting pain in the outside of his right knee for the past three years. The only way he could run without pain was with a knee brace. He had a number of different types of knee brace from simple thin neoprene ones to more sturdy neoprene ones with built in hinges. This last type was the one he used most often as it gave the best relief, although it was quite cumbersome and very hot to wear.

Over the previous three years he had seen different practitioners, and at one point saw a physio once per week for three months. Unfortunately, nothing worked and the end result was always the same – he had to go back to running with a knee brace.

He eventually came to me on a recommendation. Jim’s thoughts were that something about his biomechanics (running technique) was leading to the knee pain and if he could improve his technique the pain would go away. Jim was also very concerned that if he ran with the knee pain (i.e. without the brace), he would be doing himself damage and severely injure the tissues.

The assessment

I always start my assessments with some basic pain and neuro education. After listening to Jim’s background and discussing his pre-submitted health forms, I explained how pain and movement works through an applied neurology lens. I often begin this education piece with the information in Post 1 of this mini series and expand from there as necessary. I find this helps to relieve some of the fear that you may have over damaging tissue when you run in pain. Let’s be clear though, running through pain is never a good idea, but the reframing of pain Vs injury helps you to take a step back and look at your situation more objectively.

Following this discussion, I stuck a load of dots on Jim and observed him walking up and down my office; taking video for discussion later in the assessment. How you walk gives me a wealth of information about how well your brain and nervous system is integrating with your muscles, and how well you unconsciously control certain movements. Jim then walked on the treadmill as it gives me slightly different data, and then he did a very small amount of running (both barefoot and in shoes) so I could capture the most important movement patterns as he ran. Now onto the really fun bit.

The rest of the assessment was made up of lots of brain-based tests and drills designed to look at Jim’s movement patterns specific to running. So in this section, I’m looking for things like coordination, agility, stability (both conscious and reflexive), balance, and your ability to express and control strength in certain movements. In Jim’s case, I also wanted to look at his sensory system in depth. From Jim’s pre-submitted forms, I had designed some tests to specifically assess how his sensory input may be contributing and impacting his knee pain.

Sensory Mapping

You may not be able to fully appreciate why this is important, so let’s take a very brief detour into the world of sensory mapping…

Without wanting to go into any complicated explanations, science has revealed to us that you have a number of virtual maps of your body that sit in various areas of your brain. These maps detail parts of your body with particular reference to controlling movement. The only way these maps can be kept to date is through the sensory input that comes in from those areas. If the maps go out of date or get blurry, your brain cannot accurately identify where that body part is so cannot move and control it well.

If the brain doesn’t feel ‘safe’ in knowing where a body part is, you won’t be able to be strong in that area and you may well be inaccurate when trying to move. Let’s just say that the body part in question is your knee. If this map is blurry, then your brain cannot identify where your knee is, so it can’t move it well. In addition, this inability to move well spills over into not being able to stabilise your knee joint.

As I’m sure you can imagine, when you are running your ability to stabilise your knees is very important. If you aren’t able to do this, your brain doesn’t feel ‘safe’ and predicts that this could lead to a physical injury. In order to get you to do something about it (initially, to stop this threatening activity of running), it gives you the experience of pain. But get this, it may not be the map of your knee that’s blurry. It could be your ankle or your hip and your brain is using pain in the knee because it knows you’ll pay attention to it.

Updating Jim’s Brain Based GPS

Through the sensory testing, I discovered that Jim’s right leg had a much lower sensitivity to vibration, heat and cold. This was most pronounced around his right knee and right ankle. The maps of these areas, therefore, were not being properly updated as there were significant sensory mapping data missing. So the first part of my mission to help Jim run without knee pain was to begin updating those brain maps.

To help update the maps and to also start to improve Jim’s right sided reflexive stability, we spent a couple of sessions where we combined cold sensory input around his right leg with loaded coordination and accuracy drills. This involved exercises such as accuracy shoulder circles, banded punch outs using my reaction lights, and mobilising the nerves around his right side pelvis and right leg.

As we started to make changes, Jim started to feel better about his running and was doing a bit more – and he had ran twice the preceding week without the knee brace. We then started to see the impact of not having the required level of skill to stabilise his joints to the degree needed for an increase in his running. Over the past months, Jim had also had left heel pain but this had been secondary to his right knee pain so wasn’t an initial priority. Now, however, it started to feel worse. Jim had changed running shoes which may also have been a factor, but the main challenge was that he still hadn’t developed the necessary stability skill, and clear brain maps, that he needed in order to increase his running. Determined as ever, Jim was due to run a trail half marathon in a couple of days.

Although that race went well, it was clear that Jim’s left heel pain was now the priority. We shifted focus slightly to deal with that while Jim was still doing the brain mapping exercises for his knee. After a few weeks of doing the exercises, Jim’s heel pain had improved and we put our focus back onto his right knee.

We spent some more time clearing up Jim’s brain maps with a variety of exercises designed specifically to challenge his brain and nervous system to clear the maps up.

The Big Breakthrough

Jim could do a few runs a week now without the brace, and even went for a period of a couple of weeks where he didn’t wear it at all. However, he had become somewhat reliant on it from a comfort perspective. Jim had used his knee brace for so long that his entire belief system about his knee pain was firmly attached to his use of the knee: with the brace, he had no pain and felt fully confident in running up 13 miles. Without the brace he could run without pain, but was always on edge about the possibility of impending tissue damage because he didn’t have the knee brace supporting him.

So now I had the added challenge of changing Jim’s belief system so we could reduce his anxiety around running without a knee brace. As part of this process, we also looked together in some detail at what the knee brace was actually doing for him.

The first thing I did was to demonstrate that his knee brace wasn’t giving any real support to his knee joint at all. It was just a neoprene brace with some plastic hinges built in. Although it was a bit weighty and felt the part, the truth was that Jim could move his knee into every angle very easily and the brace didn’t stop him. If it truly was providing any kind of positional or rigid joint support, he shouldn’t have been able to do that. So if it wasn’t providing significant joint support, what was it doing that was making his running completely pain free when he wore it?

We looked next at whether the heat being generated by the brace was making up for the lack of cold sensory input that Jim had in his knee, and therefore helping to update his map on the fly. There was good logic around this, and if the brace was heating the skin then this would help clear up the map as he was running. This in turn would help his brain activate the muscles better and stabilise the joint: no threat, no pain.

Then Jim told me that at the times when he wasn’t wearing the brace, if his knee hurt he would massage it in the painful area and this often allowed him to continue running for a bit longer. So I decided to get Jim to do some safe exercises that nevertheless irritated his knee, so I could do some testing. Jim started doing single leg squats and sure enough his knee pain came back. So I checked the skin mobility around the relevant area and discovered that it didn’t move very well. Skin stretch and fascial stretch (the deeper layers of tissue) are important sensory inputs that also help to map out your joints, and for Jim the skin stretch sensitivity in that area was poor.

I had Jim squat again but this time I made contact with his skin in the relevant area around his knee at an appropriate firmness and depth, and his knee pain simply vanished. I learned from this experiment that Jim’s knee brace was giving him firm pressure and pushing layers of his skin together which was providing the necessary sensory input to complete the brain map and allow his brain to control and stabilise his knee.

After some more experimentation, I came up with a personalised taping strategy that provided the same pushing together of Jim’s skin and fascial layers. So I managed to replicate the benefits the knee brace was giving him with a simple single piece of kinesiology tape strategically applied, that was both more comfortable and more practical than lugging a hinged knee brace around. Jim found he could complete all of his runs totally free of any knee pain as long as he had used the taping strategy before he ran.

So the big lesson here is that Jim’s lack of sensory input from his skin and deeper layers of tissue in a small area near his right knee, was confusing his brain and stopping the brain maps of his knee from being correctly updated. Combine this with the other sensory deficits and the brain maps were constantly out of date. Because the maps were blurry, his brain couldn’t properly control his knee when he was running. This meant he wasn’t handling the forces correctly which was creating a large threat level for his brain. His brain interpreted this as being unsafe and produced a pain experience to get Jim to stop what he was doing.

Was Jim’s issue fully resolved? No, he still needs to use the tape until such a point where the sensory deficit has been improved. This is going to take time and dedication, and Jim may decide it’s easier just to use a small piece of tape on his knee each time he runs.

So No Strength Work Then?

It’s very common in cases of knee pain for you to be given a load of strength work to improve the activation and strength of the knee and surrounding areas. While this can work in some people at some times, I often find that this doesn’t address the source of the issue. Is strength the ultimate output we want? Yes, but how you go about achieving it is the key.

Jim, like you, already has an abundance of strength in his muscles without doing additional lifting. The goal wasn’t to add more strength. Jim simply wasn’t able to access the existing strength available to him. The goal then, was finding a way for Jim’s nervous system to effectively activate his current strength and help his brain in stabilising his ankle, knee and hips.

Through all of the mapping exercises we did, and then finally with the specialist taping, we were able to do just that. We did use resistance bands at times, but I used these to stimulate stability with light and moving resistance rather than direct lifting work.

As an added benefit, Jim had always had very tight hamstrings – so much so that he couldn’t forward bend towards his toes very far at all. In problem solving his knee and heel pain, we also hugely improved his hamstring flexibility and strength without ever directly working on his hamstrings. Things like that happen a lot when I work at the level of the nervous system.

Main Takeaway

If you’ve had knee pain (or ankle, hamstring, hip pain etc) for more than six to twelve weeks, maybe you need to be looking wider than just some calf raises, clams, squats and lunges. Perhaps your sensory system needs testing to see if there are reasons why your brain won’t allow you to access your current strength. My motto, learned directly from two of the experts I’ve been following for many years, The Gait Guys, is:

1. Develop the skill first.

2. Add endurance to that skill.

3. Finally, add more strength to that skill if it’s needed.

In Jim’s case, he had to develop a joint stability skill that was currently beyond what he had. We achieved this through mapping exercises, sensory therapy and taping. He is currently adding endurance to this skill through his running and other exercises, and a natural part of this process is accessing more of the strength you already have.

The post Why Does My Knee Hurt? Case Study 1 appeared first on RunTeach.

Earning The Injury – A Bigger Problem Than Just Knees

Along with the monumental growth of recreational running over the past 10 years or so, there has also been a huge increase in the number of runners getting injured. You may think that’s logical and it does make sense that if the total number of runners increases, so does the total number of injuries. So far so obvious.

But I think the ratio of injuries to runners has got all skewed and the same runners are getting more and more injuries in a shorter and shorter time. In fact, I think that running related injuries in some sectors of recreational running are so common that they are almost worn as a badge of honour! Injuries almost seem to be an inevitable part of being a runner.

This may be common, but it’s NOT NORMAL!

When is it alright to just accept that we get injured? Never! But that’s what seems to be happening and I get disheartened whenever I read about runners getting injured over and over again and often ask myself the question “why?”.

Back To Knees

OK, mini rant over.

So, why does your knee hurt? To answer this question we need to put injuries into two distinct camps:

1. Acute injuries that have just happened. For example, you’ve slipped off a curb (or stepped off the promenade which I witnessed an unfortunate gentleman do the other day on the beach) and twisted your knee and ankle. Or, two days ago you banged your knee really hard on the table leg and it’s swollen right up. Or, you’ve unfortunately tripped on a tree root and face planted like a good’un.
   
   I used to split the above type of injuries from the more common running injuries that tend to sneak up on you over time. But in this context it’s more useful to keep them together as ultimately if there are tissue issues, it’s a single point in time where the threshold has been breached and led to those issues – even if it’s been a slow burn to get to that point.
   
   All these are examples of an acute injury that may or may not have resulted in some tissue related issues (strains, tears, breaks etc). In all these cases, your brain thinks you’re pretty stupid and in order to punish you releases huge amounts of pain… No, not really – but your brain does think the behaviour that led to the acute injury was a bit uncalled for and creates a small packet of data called a Neurotag that it can push in front of you next time, just to remind you that doing it again may be a little silly and this can trigger caution – a good thing.
   
   What actually happens at the brain level is that the area that received the physical injury goes on heightened alert and special threat sensors in the tissues send signals to your brain alerting it that there’s either an issue or a possibility of an issue.
   
   If your brain thinks the situation is important enough (based on a lot of past and current data), it will produce an output to get you to change your behaviour. In the case of acute injuries it’s normally quite a bit of pain so you pay attention to not using the injured area until it’s had time to heal.
   
   The threat sensors, called nociceptors, stay at a high sensitivity until such a time that the tissue has recovered enough that you can go back to using it. Essentially, the nociceptors create a buffer zone around the injured area that if you try to access (i.e. move, put weight on, put force through, etc) the brain’s response is to create an experience of pain to remind you to back off.
   
   Under normal circumstances, most injuries will have recovered to a state where the sensitivity of the nociceptors has gone almost back to normal within six weeks. Under certain conditions this can take longer, but rarely more than 12 weeks for most of the common injuries. Of course, there are always exceptions so it’s always a good idea to get things checked out by medically trained bods if you are in any doubt at all.
   
   So, in summary: acute injuries, whether they actually result in tissue issues or not, are injuries that have happened somewhere in the last 6 weeks. They usually cause an increase in sensitivity in your threat receptors (nociceptors) that in turn triggers the creation of a buffer zone. This buffer zone is closely monitored by the nociceptors and they inform the brain if you try to breach it. In response, your brain creates the experience of pain to remind you to reign it in. Usually, but not always, this buffer zone shrinks as the tissues recover and the sensitivity of the nociceptors returns to normal.
2. “But I’ve had my pain for months!” I hear you cry. I know, I know, we’re coming to that now. The second category or injury was what used to be called chronic injury. This is the pain and apparent injuries that just go on and on and on. So what’s happening here?
   
   At this point it’s really useful to separate out injuries from pain. You may have gathered from the acute injuries section that injuries and pain aren’t necessarily linked. “Whoa!!! Wait, what???!”. That’s right, injuries and pain don’t need to be bed buddies – you can have one without the other. I know, mind-blowing isn’t it. But you actually already knew that. Here are some examples:
   1. Military personnel injured on a battlefield that don’t feel any pain until they are in a hospital.
   2. The guy in Australia who walked down the high street with an axe in his head, even stopping to buy a sandwich from a convenience store on his way to the hospital – didn’t feel a thing.
   3. That cut you just noticed on your finger and now hurts because you’ve seen the blood.
   4. Phantom limb pain where the pain is somewhere in the limb that’s no longer there.
   5. And countless other examples, both major and minor.
      

So what we are really talking about in this section is chronic pain rather than injury, now often referred to as long-term pain. This will make more sense in a minute, I promise.

Remember in the acute injury section I mentioned that usually, the buffer zone reduces within six weeks? Well, sometimes the system just doesn’t work very well for one reason or another. This means the buffer zone stays put and the sensitivity stays high. In fact, the sensitivity can even increase and this can become a real problem. The key thing here is that while the buffer zone stays where it is and the nociceptive sensitivity stays high, the actual tissues themselves are recovering exactly as they should. This results in…dun, dun, dun…..

Pain without injury.

So it is completely feasible, and actually very, very common, that if you’ve had pain for more than at least six weeks, your are moving into a chronic pain state where the injury (if there even was one at all – don’t worry, that’s for a different day) is recovering well but the system isn’t resetting. This results in your brain being tricked into thinking it needs to keep giving you the experience of pain so you avoid using the now non-injured area. 

Does that mean you should just push through the pain if you’ve had it longer than six weeks? NO! STOP! DON’T EVER DO THAT!

Pain MUST Be Paid Attention To

Even if you’ve had the same pain for many weeks, months or years, you should always pay attention to it. Pain is an output from your brain to let you know something isn’t right and you need to take action. Even if your nociceptive sensitivity and buffer system hasn’t reset properly, you still need to pay attention to the pain experience.

There are many things that could be triggering the threat levels in your nociceptors and stopping the system from resetting. Often, I find this is connected with a poor sensory or motor map of a joint at one side (or both sides) of the painful area.

If, as part of the original injury (even if it was years ago) some of your sensory ability may have been affected, the joint maps may be incomplete. Your brain uses this sensory input to help determine where a joint is, and how to activate and control the muscles and connective tissue in supporting the functioning of that joint.

This can also impact your ability to stabilise your joints when running, and you can probably guess that this itself presents a huge threat to the brain. In turn, your brain produces a pain experience to get you to stop doing the actions leading to the threat, and you get in a cycle of threat-pain-threat-pain etc.

This can be hard to break, particularly with traditional strength-type training and rehab as they almost completely miss the mark of how your system needs to be treated for those sensory systems to be up-regulated and stimulated.

Paying attention to your pain experience can give many clues as to the underlying cause(s) and is often not directly related to the painful area at all. Ignoring your pain experience can lead to unhelpful compensations that can then lead to other acute injuries, whether of the immediate kind or the slow burn kind.

So, Why Does My Knee Hurt?

Hopefully, this article has helped you to understand that injury and pain aren’t necessarily linked, and you can have one without the other. You will also appreciate that sometimes your system doesn’t reset correctly following an injury (or perceived injury), and this can lead to long-term pain because something is still causing a threat to your brain and until you deal with that something, it can be a very long road back. This is often the reason why you may get recurring pain in the same or a similar area.

So the real answer to “Why Does My Knee Hurt? AKA Runner’s Knee” is:

It Depends…

Over the next few weeks I’m going to write up some of the case studies of runners that I’ve worked with where we’ve approached their knee pain, as well as other “injuries”, at the level of the nervous system rather than just always going for “strengthen, strengthen, strengthen” in the traditional way.

This means that I’ve assessed how and why their nociceptive system isn’t resetting as it should, and we’ve designed specific drills and exercises, as well as things like specific taping strategies, to make incredible progress – even when they have already seen everyone else and done everything else.

I hope you’ve found this article interesting and it’s raised some questions about how you currently approach your running injuries and pain. As for the answers… you’ll need to open your mind and stay tuned for more articles.

The post Why Does My Knee Hurt? AKA Runner’s Knee appeared first on RunTeach.

I then take you through a full progression of balance skills and some strategies for helping you to improve your balance.

Finally, I tell you about my “in-development” balance app that you are very welcome to use for FREE. You can register for a FREE account here.

You can also find the video over on my Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/RunTeachUK/videos/244990659957344/

I would love it if you could go over to my Facebook page afterwards and like the video. Also, please share with as many people as you like – thank you!

The post Live skills – balance appeared first on RunTeach.

Here is my FaceBook Live video that you can also find at:

https://www.facebook.com/RunTeachUK/videos/2609064432685975/

You may want to start a minute or so in as I had a few technical challenges at the beginning!

I would love it if you could go over to my Facebook page afterwards and like the video. Also, please share with as many people as you like – thank you!

The post Live Skills – Stance and Mobility appeared first on RunTeach.

A lot of plans will begin to ramp things up now by increasing distance and adding in speed work. You may find that you do your longest run in this four week block. Building up time on feet and speed endurance are what this phase is all about, as it continues to build both physical and mental fatigue resistance. 

The speed work that gets added to plans is designed to challenge your energy systems and muscles in a slightly different way that you’ve been training so far. The higher intensity efforts help to force adaptations in your muscles and connective tissue, making them stronger. They also challenge your cardiorespiratory system and helps to improve your aerobic thresholds. Lots of other good stuff is happening here as well, including building mental strength and preparing you for a solid performance on marathon day. 

For me, starting to train more at my target marathon pace is important. Remember, the marathon is a long way and commands a consistent output from start to finish. To most of us that don’t run with power meters, this means a consistent pace, and that’s why setting your target pace is important. This pace will feel easy in the first half, and will become progressively harder as you go into the last third. So, getting a lot of practice at this target pace is critical to helping you find that groove on race day. To help you find your marathon pace, the McMillan calculator is a good starting point.

 Different plans will have different formats for building this in, such as sandwiching  it in between easy sections in a longer run or having fast finish long runs where the last few miles are at your marathon pace. If your plan doesn’t do this, I would recommend adding some marathon pace practice in. The easiest way of doing this is to sandwich by splitting your runs so that you do one third at easy pace, one third at marathon pace and the last third at easy pace. Start off with your mid-length runs and keep your long runs easy. If you are more experienced at marathon training, then you can do this in your long runs, or go for the fast finish option. 

When I design marathon plans for my athletes, I use the speed sessions to build lots of marathon pace practice. I use the sandwich method but tend to sandwich faster efforts in between two sections of marathon pace. I’ve found this to be very effective and is based on the speed sessions designed for my first claim club, Bournemouth AC

If you don’t already have a target marathon pace, choose one. Look through your runs in the base phase and pick a pace that is realistic and aligns with your goals. If your goal is to finish without a specific time target and simply enjoy the event, choose a pace that will allow you to do this. Don’t put yourself under unnecessary pressure. It’s easy to get carried away, especially if your training is going well. If you have a time goal, work out the pace you need to run and decide whether that’s realistic and adjust if necessary. It is likely that at the end of this phase you will reevaluate the pace following the speed work and any tempo runs.

Once you have your target marathon pace, practice it at least once per week and build up the time you run at this pace. However, you are not trying to run long distances at this pace. Remember, you can sandwich it into your runs and you can do a couple of longer runs with the last 3 to 5 miles at this pace.

If your plan gives you speed work – do it! This is so important for your physical and mental development. I appreciate that it can be confusing to decide on paces and understand the different run type terminology, but your plan should provide guidance on this. For my own explanation of run types, see here.

Run your long runs easy and don’t panic if you have to walk some of it. You want to push yourself somewhat, but you also have to take into account everything else going on: weather; personal stress, terrain; sleep quality – to name just a few. If you need short walking breaks near the end of a long run, that’s fine. It doesn’t necessarily translate to walking on race day, so take the pressure off and enjoy it. Yes, it will be tough – but remeber your goal in this phase: time on feet endurance and fatigue resistance.

Practice your fuelling and hydration. Do not leave this to chance! This is in two parts:

• Pre-race: Think about what you are going to eat in the two days before, and the morning of the marathon. The same goes for hydration: keep your electrolyte levels topped up. Practice in this phase of training, even if it’s just once before a really long run.

• In-run: Experiment with your in-run fuel and hydration. What does the event have available and at what frequency; will it be suitable for you? For example, if they hand out gels or sports drinks and you think you may use them, get hold of some and try them on your runs. Not all products suit everyone and upset stomachs are very common with poor fuelling strategies and a lack of trying products beforehand.

One strategy I’ve used very successfully is pre-loading both fuel and hydration. For fuel, I always use Generation UCAN (Super Starch). This can provide several hours of energy and you take it before you run. You can find out more here, and get a 10% discount using the code: RunTeach.

For hydration, my product of choice is SOS as it’s specifically designed to deliver a measured amount of electrolytes without the fizzing or stomach upset that some other electrolyte products can cause. As a bonus it is also fully organic and mixes immediately. I pre-load with this to ensure I am well hydrated with topped up electrolyte levels. I use it both the night before a long run / race as well as in the morning of the event. You can take it with you if you prefer to carry fluids rather than use the on-course options. You can find more here, and save 20% with discount code: CHRIS20.

I love this phase of marathon training as you can really get your teeth into it. You are building up raw endurance, speed endurance, fatigue resistance, fuel and hydration run-throughs, and for me: starting to do mental and visualisation run-throughs.

Have fun with it, and embrace the challenge – the taper will be here soon enough!

Most importantly, keep a check on your effort and pace – keep it real and doable. Remain calm about your long runs, practice that marathon pace, get in that speed work if it’s on your plan and experiment with fuel and hydration.

Until the next phase, happy training!

The post 5 do’s of marathon training – progressive phase appeared first on RunTeach.

If that sounds like you, then this post will help. If you’ve looked at training plans or read articles about getting faster or improving, you probably realise that you need to mix up your training. To improve, you need to build on what you already do, and shake it up a bit.

And here’s where it can get confusing: there’s a baffling selection of run types where not even the professionals always agree on their definition. You know the ones: tempo, threshold, intervals, repeats…

So to help you decipher these a bit better, I’ve laid them out below. In my definitions, I use an effort scale based on perceived effort. I find this useful as it takes into account how we are feeling on any given day and can prevent us from feeling like we are shackled to a particular pace or heart rate irrespective of whether we are feeling amazing or tired and sluggish. The scale looks like this:

The post Run Types appeared first on RunTeach.

We don’t even need to open the weather app because we can see it streaming down the widows. We can hear it bouncing off the Velux and as it cascades over the edges of our gutters. If we stand long enough on the pavement, our feet act like dams as they hold back the floodwaters of our great British winter.

And if that weren’t bad enough, it’s almost freezing and it’s pitch black. A gloomy, unwelcoming, murkiness awaits us outside – and you have your evening run to do!

Some of us relish these harsh conditions and wear our toughness to get out there and get it done as a badge of honour. But for many of us, the thought of getting cold and wet is enough to miss our evening run. If this sounds like you, my 5 tips to get you motivated and out the door will help.

If you find it hard to leave your warm and cosy home, get changed at work. Go for your run straight from work skip the temptation to stay indoors. I’ve always done this and find it a fantastic way of ensuring I get my running in.

We read so much about setting goals in running, and setting one for the winter months can be a real motivator. Write down what you want to achieve by the end of the dark, wet weather, and make sure every run counts towards this. You are far more likely to get out the door if you have purpose.

While some of us love running solo in the rain, many of us find this to be the hardest part. Share your wet and windy run experience with likeminded people. Team up with a local running group, club or a bunch of running mates – The cold never seems as bad when you are with others.

Here is a list of RunTogether groups, and here is an index of affiliated running clubs.

One of the most difficult aspects of soggy, cold winter running is getting out in the first place. But when you are running, you often forget those first few minutes and settle into it. Hold onto that wonderful feeling of achievement you get when you finish your run. Use it as motivation the next time – the more you do this the easier it will get to take on the winter!

The feeling of having some form of protection from the weather can be enough to help us get out the door. You don’t need a full on waterproof, breathable, mountain-proof running coat… A simple lightweight jacket that protects you in those first few minutes is often all you need to take the edge off.

Here is a downloadable infographic as quick reminder.

I’m sure there are loads more tips out there, and I would love to hear some of your suggestions for a follow-up post.

The post 5 Tips for winter motivation appeared first on RunTeach.

As the name suggests, it is a 24 hour endurance race and it starts at midday on the Saturday and the last lap must be started before midday on the Sunday. The race numbers carry the tag line Epic, Brutal, Relentless and by lap 3 brutal and relentless was already kicking in!

The organisers bill the event as Glastonbury for Runners and there is certainly a festival feel with hundreds of tents, a race village with colourful flags, food vans, craft activities and a real atmosphere of community. This year there was an even more authentic feel with the rain and mud – unfortunately I can’t run in wellies! Mind you, I’m not sure how much use they would have been anyway.

This was my 5th year at the event and it has grown hugely over that time. I ran in a small team of 5 runners for the first 2 years and then a team of 4 runners in the 3rd year. We were a mixed bag in terms of ability, but all had a steely determination to do our best no matter what. We did reasonably well each year (apart from the 3rd year), falling just outside the top 10. We all did 35 miles each (7 laps) most years, but in our 3rd year we covered 40 miles each.

Last year, one of the team members, Emma, asked if I would like to run as a pair in the Mixed Pair category. Initially hesitant, I agreed with grave reservations of whether I could actually run 5 miles every 50 to 60 minutes for 24 hours. On the event weekend we ran just for the fun of it, and were surprised to learn that by Saturday evening we were in 3rd place! No pressure… Aside from a bit of a mixup in the race results at the end when we thought we had come 2nd only to be demoted to 3rd (which was actually the correct result), we were elated! Despite my joy, it had been tough and I really wasn’t up for facing going round and round that course again – enough! 

But when Emma asked if I would do it this year, I somehow found myself agreeing – what was I thinking!

 All this went through my mind as finished my 3rd lap last Saturday, covered in mud and already feeling exhausted. I said to Emma, who hadn’t had any sleep the night before due to an upset stomach, that I didn’t mind if we called it a day. “No, I’m fine – I’ll keep going” she said. Drat! I thought…

The training hadn’t really gone well for either of us and we knew we weren’t as fit as last year. We were happy just to plod along and finish wherever we finish… kind of. You see, both Emma and I are highly competitive at some level. And last year’s 3rd place was a benchmark that neither of us really wanted to let slide so much that it fell off the table. “Top 10” we agreed. But this early on I just wanted to pack it in. The course was muddy and a lot busier than it had been in previous years – it was hard work. 

At the end of the next couple of laps I tried the same gentle words to get Emma to rethink our continuation of this torture, but she held fast. At one point Emma’s friend Magda stuck her head in my tent during one of the brief few minutes of rest I had when Emma was on the course. She said sternly to me “You are not going to quit – are you” in her firm Polish accent – it was definitely an instruction, not a question. And it was what I needed in order to get my head together – thanks Magda 🙂

I noticed that so far I had run every lap faster than the equivalent lap last year. When running the laps I felt fine and didn’t want to slow down – however I was waiting for the fatigue to hit me like a brick wall, but it never really did. And, if I had needed any more incentive to keep moving quickly, by 5pm we were sitting in 3rd place out of 36 pairs in our category. This slipped to 4th place over the next couple of laps, but by midnight we were back to 3rd although it was very close on timings.

The way the event works is that the runners/teams (solo, pairs, small teams, large teams) with the most laps in each category are ahead. If a runner/team has the same number of laps, then it comes down to who has run them faster. We were only just ahead of 4th place on time but determined to hold it.

Teams have different strategies of how they run the event. The only official rules are that everyone in the team must do at least one lap, and you can only have one person from your team on the course at any one time. You must hand over the wristband in the official changeover area.

Pairs is often seen as the hardest combination, although I would also say a team of 3 is pretty tough going. Solos clearly have it tough because they are by themselves, but they can at least come off the course for a rest or food whenever they like and if they are overdoing it, then can go and have a nap. Of course, this will affect their race result, but many of the Solo runners do this.

Pairs is a bit different. There is always that pressure to get back to the changeover area in the time you said you would because you know your running partner is waiting there for you. This is especially critical as you also know that they have given up rest to get there for that time, so they are mighty annoyed if you are late!

Some pairs start running single laps (lap, changeover, lap, changeover etc) and then overnight they switch to maybe two or three consecutive laps to give the other runner a chance to rest. Emma and I tried a double lap once last year but it really didn’t work for us. So this year we stuck to just doing 1 lap each.

Because Emma was running a lap between 48 minutes to start with, and then in about an hour as the event progressed, I got about 20 minutes where I could lay down (alarm set and one eye open!) You might think 48 to 60 minutes is a decent amount of time, but when you consider walking from the changeover area to the toilet and then back to the tent; a quick chat with friends who were in teams; try and get something (actually not really anything) to eat; rehydrate; head down; back to changeover area 5 minutes before they are due in… it goes pretty quick!

And I had sheer luxury because Emma had virtually no time between laps because I started out at just under 38 minutes per lap and never took longer than 50 minutes. I have no idea how she survived it.

But survive it we did. Even overnight when the course was pitch black and all we had to rely on was our head torches, feeling our way through the slippery mud. And there was mud! The course is a 5 mile loop on mixed terrain that takes in some beautiful forest and countryside. There are one or two hills to mix things up, some crazy folk with inflatable guitars blaring out rock and roll from a VW camper van and handing out cocktails at halfway… and did I mention the mud?

On the Saturday lunchtime it had rained a lot. It was sloppy and yuk. Then throughout the rest of the day it started to dry up and even overnight it got better. The mud turned from very slippery to gloopy, but at least we could run through it. And then it rained… 7am saw a downpour that drenched Emma and the other runners on the course. There was so much rain that it turned some parts of the course into a quagmire reminiscent of a wet and muddy farmyard that has been driven through several times by a tractor.

Some parts of the course were so bad that I had to run along verges and pick alternative footing. One advantage I did have from doing so many laps though – I knew which bits all the runners were going through and which bits were left alone and made a better route. At one point in the morning part of course was diverted as it was just too slippery and dangerous.

But did that deter us? No it did not! By early morning we were over a lap ahead of 4th place, but also a lap behind 2nd place. Knowing it was unlikely that we could catch them I kept maximum effort up anyway, and we did gain a bit.

Last year I ran a total of 14 laps which was 70 miles. Emma ran 13 laps or 65 miles. This year, Emma was determined to get that last lap in, and I encouraged her so that we could make absolutely certain we held onto that 3rd place. We had worked so hard that I really didn’t want to give it up now. In the end, 4th place decided to stop at a total of 25 laps so Emma probably didn’t need to run that final lap – but she wasn’t having any of it. We both ran 14 laps (140 miles combined), equalling the 1st and 2nd place pairs, only they ran them faster than us.

As we crossed the line together on her last lap (I had handed my timing chip in already so as not to break the rules), we celebrated that fact that not only had we finished 3rd despite the lack of training, pre-event stress and tiredness, Emma had ran 5 miles further than last year and I had run my 70 miles more than 38 minutes faster than last year, completing them in 10 hours 40 minutes and 17 seconds. Now was the time for Epic!

Just to finish, I have to say a huge thank you to Ian and Amy from SOS Hydration (20% discount code CHRIS20 at http://bit.ly/2IVv7Jo ). SOS has been my preferred hydration product for a few years and it really makes a positive difference to my running. At Endure 24 Ian and Amy were there as sponsors of the event and provided much needed support and hydration after each of my laps.

As I mentioned earlier, there really wasn’t time to take on much fuel. Add to this the fact that I suffer from stomach issues if I eat too close to running, so I knew nutrition would be a big factor. I burned an average of 460 Kcal per lap, so I definitely needed to fuel. This is where Generation UCAN comes in (10% discount code RunTeach at https://www.generationucan.co.uk/). As a very slow release carbohydrate, one scoop was giving me up to 2 hours of sustained energy. As such, I didn’t need to start taking any until lap 5 and after that it was every 3rd lap. I had absolutely no stomach issues at all, which is unheard of for me at this event. I did also have some fast acting sugar in the form of marshmallows and American hard gums, as well as a few dry crackers throughout the 24 hours. But I couldn’t have done it without the slow releasing energy of UCAN.

The other product that I used (and caused much hilarity amongst my friends and running buddies) was the vibrating foam roller from PulseRoll – much easier to use than a standard foam roller.

So, if you want an event that will challenge you but is also very sociable and where you can choose how much running you do, then Endure 24 Reading or Leeds could be for you.

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