 All right guys, so times are weird right now and a lot of races are cancelled. So the whole spring season really isn't happening anymore. And so I thought we'd get into some strategies and some tips and tricks regarding how to approach your training now that your race is cancelled and how to make the most out of this peculiar time that we're in now with the coronavirus and all of the effects that it's having on society and for us runners on our race schedule. So let's get into that, stay tuned. So obviously a lot of us had races planned for this spring season, maybe a 5k or 10k or perhaps even a half marathon, marathon, ultramarathon. Please of course leave a comment, let us know what race you were training for. Personally I'm coming back from a long break and I'm basically just working on building up my fitness again but I did have a race or I do have a race planned for June and I'm not sure yet if it's gonna happen or not but suppose it's not gonna happen. I'm looking at my schedule and I'm thinking how can I make the most of this period of the year if there's no race to train for and also there's also added challenges now in terms of not being able to train in groups and not that I do that much anyway but and there's also no gyms all the gyms are closed so no no traditional weight training so how then should we approach our training? Well you know if we had a race to train for we would work on a build up right we call it a build up which means after we've done some base training perhaps where we sort of lay foundation and get the mileage up to where we want it to be we start adding in workouts specific to the race that we're doing so if you're a marathoner you'd be doing slightly different workouts than if you're a 5k runner right and that's how we approach it and we increase the load and we peak as it's called we peak as we get closer to the race and then we taper down do the race and we have a great performance hopefully. That's how we do a race build up now if we don't have a race to train for well how do we approach training? Well I suggest that we don't do it too differently from if we had a race perhaps we can even play around with Strava segments or try to do a FKT fastest known time or you know just like work on our own personal records perhaps perhaps there's a there's a route or a loop that you usually do and you can build up to it over a few weeks and then try and do a personal best on your own little race right that's one way to do it but generally I would approach it as a base phase and so perhaps you already did a base phase over the winter and now you're ready for the race build up well just look at it like an extended base training phase I think we could all use some more base training absolutely we need build ups and we need specific race training in order to get good at racing and to sort of get that peak fitness but most of our fitness most of our performance if we're running long distance races which means anything longer than a couple of minutes really most of our performance is coming from the aerobic system and the aerobic system is developed mostly by time easy intensity for the most part so if we could manage to build up that volume a little bit and just get an extra run in a lot of people now are home from work they work from home or maybe they're even out of the job because of the wear defects of the coronavirus on society and people have to close down and then there's all kinds of things going on perhaps you have a little bit more time on your hands perhaps you have a little bit more flexibility on your hands in that case why not add in an extra run per week or or or even two or three few more hours of training of course you don't want to do it like that you want to build up do it over time don't get injured or anything but if you could look at this as an opportunity to get in a little bit of extra time of easy intensity running that could benefit you in the long term personally I you know I would look at it or I do look at it as racing is something that you sort of you sacrifice that aerobic what how can I say it when you're working on race specific workouts you can't spend as much time and energy on just building the overall volume and fundamental fitness and that's because your body can only tolerate so much stress in any given time if you're doing workouts you can't also be working on your volume for example so now that you don't have a race to work on anyway spend that time working on your aerobic base so how do you do that well I would throw interval training out the window for now I wouldn't really do that I would do that in a build up to a race now I would focus on easy runs I would focus on long runs and then I would have two types of workouts one of them could be an interval type workout actually but let's talk about it so so the intervals type of workout is actually a strength and speed workout so we're talking 100 meter strikes right just 100 meters of pretty fast running like we're talking 800 meter pace to 1500 meter pace so pretty fast but not a full-on sprint you do like you know five or 10 of those or even 20 depending on your level with a good rest in between couple of minutes in between to fully recover because this is this is not a metabolic workout it's not like a an engine workout this is a workout that's that's meant for your muscle neuromuscular system okay so we're trying to develop your speed and your efficiency and your power and so that's done with short intervals and long rest and it's not very taxing you don't build up a lot of you know you're not going to be breathing heavy or something like that because it's over before it starts to some extent it's actually this is anaerobic training but we're not doing so much of it so it's not really going to be that taxing it is taxing for your musculoskeletal system though your tendons your muscles your bones so be careful when you're adding this in another version of it would be to to go do heels you know heel training could be almost a sprint actually but it could also be slower over a minute or two going up a hill and then take jogging back down this builds strength so you know if you're typically working on race specific skills um you're busy your body is busy adapting to that those threshold runs and those intervals and all the mileage and everything so it's you don't typically it's difficult sometimes to add in a new element because there's already so many elements going on that's what you can you know do now in the base phase the situation you're in now you can actually add in some new elements that you don't usually have perhaps so for example heel training or or these strides or or repetitions as jack daniels would call them you could even go as long as two or three hundred meters and at a 1500 meter type pace to to really work on that running economy actually it's it's almost strength training actually for runners so that's one of the workouts that I would add in once a week the other workout would be a marathon paced run okay so it's not a marathon pace basically means the the the pace that you could sustain for a few hours let's say two two three hours four hours perhaps even well it depends on your marathon goals but physiologically we're talking about the two to three hour pace the the it's slightly below your lactate threshold so it's not as taxing as a full on tempo run or a threshold run it's on the easy side of that it's on the conservative side of that pace which means you can do a little bit more of it you know again build up to it over time start with 20 minutes perhaps at this pace eventually you could do like once a week go for like an hour perhaps 45 minutes to an hour at this marathon pace or if you're working on heart rate perhaps it'll be something like 75 to 80 percent of your max heart rate perhaps like 80 percent is a good aim it depends on the person it depends on the fitness but subjectively it should feel comfortable but you're working you know it's not at the threshold it's not where you're like working steady and pretty hard but you can sustain it for a while it's not that hard it's like I can sustain this for quite a while but I am working hard you know that sort of thing those runs are really good because they're not very taxing because you're below the lactate threshold it's not really upsetting your homeostasis too much but it is working at a at the high end of your aerobic system so you're able to practice a little faster pace for a little bit longer working on that stamina and generally just having that aerobic engine being revved up quite a bit with while still not going over the threshold right so once a week a strong aerobic run let's call it that a marathon pace run perhaps or even a little bit easier than that and build up to it over time that's always an important concept so there you have it really a week of just mileage a somewhat moderate run and some faster paced short effort just to build that strength there you have it I mean that's a pretty good base training system you could add in some strength training if you if you want to do that but we don't have the gyms available most of us now so maybe you have to find things around the house or do some calisthenics um you can do some cycling I mean you can do all kinds of things but I guess the main point here is that this is an opportunity for you now to get in that long long build up okay so suppose you have a race this fall this autumn a half marathon perhaps a marathon or shorter um if you look at a marathon build up like a proper marathon build up for an elite athlete we're typically talking like five months okay of training focused on that one race now now that you don't have a spring race you can actually take that full five month months of build up now you couldn't do that before because you had a race perhaps in April May June right and you had to build up to that and then you had to recover and then you would start your your fall race build up perhaps in July that's July August September that's three months of building up your race which is a great amount to build up but uh if you really want to be serious about one race give it a five month build up of course the first the first few phases of that build up will be essentially base training like what I just described you're slowly building up your mileage you're getting more used to some race specific workouts perhaps adding in some longer runs etc but it is focused on that one race so give yourself now you have the opportunity now to give yourself five months or six or seven months actually of focusing on just first building that fundamental fitness and then getting race specific of course the the third workout that you should do every week is a long run I forgot to say that that's hugely important build that long run up just even do two long runs a medium long run and really long run just be out there for a while you could even bake the marathon pace run into the long run or maybe that's better to wait and do that as you get closer to race because that's pretty taxing you can mix it up you can do a long run and then the next week you could do the marathon pace run and the next week a long run don't overdo it though don't overcook yourself too early in a situation like this take it easy be conservative and actually focus on consistency and and continuity okay so if you can if you can nail week after week of pretty manageable training loads that's much better than trying to spike it too much too fast and just crashing or getting injured or anything like that and of course if you're interested in help with all this I'm happy to offer coaching I can coach you I can give you workouts I can make a training custom training plan for you if you want we can do consultations on Skype so if you're interested in coaching check out my coaching website there's a link in the description but yeah I think this is an opportunity I think this situation now for from a perspective of being a runner of being an athlete and I think it can be an opportunity especially now with people having a little bit more time maybe getting a little bit more sleep maybe we can pretend that we're elite athletes now most of us right like we have a little bit more time on our hand and a little bit more freedom to actually get that workout in or get that running during the day perhaps maybe you don't have to get out and do it in the morning or the afternoon like you used to when you had to go to work now you can work from home and perhaps you're able to get that couple of hours in in the middle of the day to go for a ride or go for a run and just enjoy nature you know so just take it easy enjoy yourself enjoy nature take your time to build up that fitness take your time to build that mileage experiment with some new training methods perhaps be careful not to do it too quickly make a plan build it up slowly or talk to a coach like myself in order to avoid injury and have fun in these times it's important that we have fun it can be challenging for a lot of people it is challenging for for the world as a whole right now and this is a big challenge so exercise running is a great way to cope and to stay healthy and happy I think thanks for watching hope you're having a great day check out my coaching links and other links stand below in the description please subscribe of course and I'm wishing you all the best for your running and your health and your life and see you later