While half marathons and marathons are a matter of resisting fatigue during the later miles, 5K and 10K racing is like fighting off a firestorm for the final third of the race. No matter how comfortable the early pace may feel to you, about two thirds of the way into a fast 5K or 10K a spark suddenly catches fire and starts to spread rapidly as your legs begin to lock up and your stride shortens ever so slightly. Your quads are screaming at you to stop and your upper body tenses up as you seemingly start going backward while you struggle to maintain pace or stick with the runner in front of you. There’s nothing wrong with any of this at the end of a hard race, of course; it simply means that you’re doing it right. While your muscles are inevitably going to catch fire toward the end of a competitive 5K or 10K effort, you can train your body to slow down the burn and better handle the demands of the race in training. One of my favorite ways to do this is with the descending ladder workout.
Hills and Twos is a staple early season session for a number of top high school, collegiate, and professional programs that combines a set of short, hard hill repeats with a set of short, fast intervals. I’ve been doing some version of this workout since college, the Bowerman Track Club has their own take on it, and a couple of Georgetown runners even named their podcast after it.
This workout is all about that base. It’s a relatively straightforward session that combines a set of short (30-60”) hill repeats with a moderate dose of steady state running (think marathon-ish effort). It’s perfect for athletes early in a training block when they’re building volume and reintroducing intensity without getting too specific just yet. It’s not meant to be that hard. There are a number of ways you can manipulate this workout but I like to start with the hill repeats because the athlete is fresh and we can get more out of this element of it in terms of muscle fiber recruitment, improving power, and running with good form. The steady state afterward is purely aerobic—not too hard, but not that easy—and shouldn’t take that much out of you energetically or otherwise.
Hill workouts should be an essential part of any runner’s training repertoire. They provide a lot of benefits for a relatively steep price: speed, strength, fitness, focus, challenge, and confidence all wrapped into a tidy package of uphill repeats.
I came up with this workout for my Wednesday night track crew as a fun way to get in a high volume of quality work while also practicing how to be disciplined, stay focused, and go through a wide range of gears. This session works best in a group environment because it has a competitive element to it—you’re “eliminated” when you run slower than your previous interval; whoever can tally up the most reps “wins” the workout—but it can also be done alone.
I asked readers of the morning shakeout how running has helped improve their mental health, overcome challenges in their lives, and/or made a difference in their lives beyond its physical benefits. Throughout the month of May, I’ll be sharing those stories in a series of posts on themorningshakeout.com. It’s my hope that by compiling these stories and sharing them widely it will help someone who is struggling to feel less alone, start running, and/or seek out the help they need.
I asked readers of the morning shakeout how running has helped improve their mental health, overcome challenges in their lives, and/or made a difference in their lives beyond its physical benefits. Throughout the month of May, I’ll be sharing those stories in a series of posts on themorningshakeout.com. It’s my hope that by compiling these stories and sharing them widely it will help someone who is struggling to feel less alone, start running, and/or seek out the help they need.
At its core, coaching is a relationship between two people built upon a foundation of trust and communication. This should be the first place an aspiring coach invests his or her time and energy: understanding how to connect, learning how to listen and communicate, working to gain trust. The rest of their education, in whatever form it takes, is ongoing from there.
I asked readers of the morning shakeout how running has helped improve their mental health, overcome challenges in their lives, and/or made a difference in their lives beyond its physical benefits. Throughout the month of May, I’ll be sharing those stories in a series of posts on themorningshakeout.com. It’s my hope that by compiling these stories and sharing them widely it will help someone who is struggling to feel less alone, start running, and/or seek out the help they need.
