After your 1st Event

WOOOOO  HOOOOOO!       You did it!   You ran your 1^st 5K or (fill in the blank).

And you didn’t die or come in dead last.

Now you are actually thinking “that wasn’t so bad”  or “if I would have been a little faster, I could have beat …..”.

All of these are signs that you are ready for your next event, and that you would like to do mo better this time (because you know you can).

So before you rush off and buy the latest running shoes/bike gear/etc . (read earlier posts about “it aint the shoes”) or start believing all the advertisements about supplements making you faster, stop and talk with Coach K. Skip all that frivolous stuff and get down to the nitty gritty. Training Smarter (notice we didn’t say training harder).

Get together with your Coach and make a proper training plan. This should include:

1.       Strength training

2.       Speed Work

3.       Hills –after you have made progress in the first 2 areas.

4.       Recovery Days-very often overlooked.

5.       Nutrition-very important so you can keep the repair/rebuild process ahead of breakdown.

In this post, we will talk about strength training, speed work and hills.

Strength Training- At Coach K fitness, we refer to this as building a bigger engine.  Old School track groups and cyclists, believed in focusing on “making the chassis more light weight”. Yes, trimming off the unneeded pounds is a good idea, but I believe that you also need to beef up the engine. Research from the NSCA  has shown that strength training can replace the old school idea of several short runs that were designed to build strength in athletes.  And strength training is not dependent on either weather conditions or time of day.  Make sure you check with your Coach, as there are sport specific training programs out there. And you want to be sure that your technique is correct. Remember we work smarter and change is good.

Speed work- you definitely need to work on this aspect as it will make the most improvement in your program. In future posts, we will talk more about the wide variety of speed work routines.  Coach K is a convert to speed work, after personally testing the system of the legendary runner –Emil Zatopek.  Coach K preferred to train the old school way of logging days of mega mile runs or rides and very little speed work. But this past summer, during the dog days here in Florida when running 4hrs solid was deadly, I switched to the Zatopek method. Then 3 months later,  I went and ran 16miles of trails with a top runner and was discovered that I was faster than I had been in earlier days. Go figure.  Now I occasionally throw in LSD days just for the mental aspect and test out fueling ideas.  Remember we work smarter and change is good