In this drill, you run by taking short steps as quickly as possible.
Stay on the balls of your feet at all times, and use a rapid arm movement.
Don’t lean too far forward. Try to keep your trunk upright and your head still.
Aerobic Cross-Training
Predictable training errors, such as increasing mileage or adding speed work too quickly, lead to the majority of running injuries. Just as the risk of coronary artery disease can be reduced through regular exercise, so can the risk of running injuries be reduced through modifying risk factors. One way to do this is to reduce pounding on your legs and back by substituting cross-training for a portion of your running.
The primary reason to cross-train is to provide additional cardiovascular fitness without increasing the repetitive wear and tear associated with running. Cross-training indoors can also be useful when the weather or pollution levels prevent you from running outside. Unfortunately, many runners cross-train only when injured and then return exclusively to running as soon as the injury recovers. Sure, cross-training is highly effective for maintaining fitness during times of injury, but that shouldn’t be the only time that most runners do it. If you’re careful about increases in mileage and intensity, the surfaces you run on, and the like, and you still can’t consistently reach the level of weekly mileage you’d like, then you should incorporate cross-training into your training program year-round.
No form of cross-training is a perfect substitute for running because your body adapts very specifically to training. Though you will gain cardiovascular benefits from cross-training, your neuromuscular system will not make similar gains because the movement patterns are different in cross-training activities. That’s okay, however, because cross-training should be viewed as a supplement to, not a replacement for, your running. Use cross-training in place of recovery runs and, if necessary, in place of a portion of your general aerobic conditioning. The advantage of using it for recovery training is that the increased blood flow improves your recovery without increasing the cumulative impact forces on your body.
But won’t your racing performances suffer if you replace some of your running with cross-training? The specificity-of-training principle states that your body adapts very specifically to the type of training you do. That’s why you won’t have much success as a runner by doing all your training on the bike or in the pool. But if the majority of your training is running, you can enhance your running performance by doing other types of aerobic workouts.
Scientific evidence suggests that reasonably well-trained runners can improve their running performance through cross-training, but the improvement is likely to be less than through increased running.
Cross-training activities that work the large muscle groups of the legs (such as cycling, stair climbing, in-line skating, rowing, deep-water running, and cross-country skiing) are most similar to running and should lead to the greatest improvements in performance, whereas activities less similar to running (such as swimming) would likely lead to smaller improvements in running performance.
Although the evidence suggests that cross-training can lead to improved performance in moderately trained or even well-trained runners, no scientific evidence exists concerning cross-training for elite runners, and the specificity-of-training principle likely becomes more critical the higher the level of performance.
For all but the elite, then, it appears that if you increase your training volume by cross-training, you can improve your running performance. The improvement, however, won’t be as large as if you had increased your mileage. This point goes right to the heart of the mileage versus injury trade-off. Sure, you would improve more by increasing your running, but you would also increase your risk of injury. The challenge for marathoners is to manage that trade-off by running as much as you can handle before the risk of injury shoots up.
There are many ways to cross-train, including cycling, water running, in-line skating, rowing or kayaking, cross-country skiing, stair climbing, and swimming. Let’s look at the pluses and minuses for marathon runners of the various types of cross-training.
Cycling offers many options in that you can ride a bike outdoors, use your bike on a wind trainer indoors, or use an exercise bike at home or at a gym. An advantage of cycling is that it works the cardiovascular system while eliminating the impact forces that cause most running injuries. You can therefore add cycling to your training program with little risk of bringing on typical running injuries. An advantage of cycling compared with other cross-training options is that you get to cover ground and feel the wind in your hair, just as in running.
The downsides of cycling are the risk of getting squashed by a car, the large amount of time required compared with running, and the risk of developing a short running stride. The first downside is all too possible, particularly for runners with good cardiovascular fitness but poor bike-handling skills; to keep your heart rate up, you’ll likely have to maintain speeds that could put you in danger. In a low-traffic area, cycling outdoors is a great option, but if you’re limited to cycling in an urban area without bike paths, then you may want to stay with the more-boring indoor options.
Riding indoors can be a surprisingly satisfying experience because you can concentrate on your workout without distractions or dangers such as traffic lights and cars. Although the maximum time a sane person should sit on a bike indoors is about an hour and a half, when injured, Scott laid claim to the dubious achievement of a 3-hour, 40-minute ride in his garage. (This is what iPods were invented for, right?) During times of injury, an indoor bike can also be used for lactate-threshold training.
Haile Gebrselassie
Fastest Marathon: 2:03:59
(world record)
Marathon Highlights:
First place, 2006-2008 Berlin,
2005 Amsterdam;
Three fastest marathons in history
Even if he had never run the marathon, Haile Gebrselassie could have been considered the greatest distance runner in history. But once he moved up to the longest Olympic running event and conquered it as well, all doubt was gone – there has never been another runner in the modern era like Gebrselassie. No one can match his range (from a world indoor 1,500 meters title to a world record in the marathon), his accomplishments (nearly 30 world records, from 3,000 meters indoors to the marathon) and his longevity (his marathon world record in 2007 came an astounding 14 years after his first senior world title).
Yet Gebrselassie didn’t immediately master the marathon. In his first one as an adult, at London in 2002, he faded over the last few miles to finish a well-beaten third behind Khalid Khannouchi and Paul Tergat. (Debuting in 2:06:35 is hardly a cause for shame, but Gebrselassie was unaccustomed to losing.) “I have to change a lot of things before I can become a good marathon runner,” he said at the time. One change he made was to become less of a forefoot runner. Gebrselassie believed that the springy stride resembling a sprinter’s that had served him so well on the track was costing him energy over the course of a marathon. He also put greater emphasis on finishing his long runs at marathon race pace.