8. Track Training

Most people come into running through road racing – perhaps from seeing the London Marathon on TV or being persuaded to join a charity fun run. We have met people on our courses who have never been on a running track. There is a feeling that the running track is only for the young and fit, but this is by no means the case. Tracks tend to be heavily used a couple of evenings a week, when the local club has its training nights, and under-used the rest of the time. You need to check to find out whether the track is being used over the weekend, because some summer weekends are busy.

Getting used to the track

You don’t have to warm up on the track – often it is better to do that on the grass; this prevents the track becoming clogged up with joggers and it is also easier on your legs. On your first visit I suggest that you do no more than 8 laps. Run four times round in one of the outside lanes, jogging round the bends and accelerating down the straights, gradually working up to a sprinting speed.

Take a breather, stretch a bit, and then try four laps of running 200m fast and jogging slowly for the remainder. Time yourself over 200m, making sure that you start from the right stagger mark for the lane you are in (ask someone about this if you are in doubt).

Next time you come down – at least three days later, repeat the process but drop the four laps of jogging bends, striding straights and do 8×200m.

After three sessions of this you will be ready to tackle running full laps. A good start would be to do 4×200m, then 4×400m, jogging 200m slowly for your recovery.

The basic track session

This is proper interval training, the backbone of training for all serious track runners. You fix the distance to be done, the number of repeats and the recovery time you are going to allow yourself, and then you run them in as fast an average time as possible.

For a start, having gone through the preparation above, we recommend 8×400m, with a recovery jog of 200m, for which you allow yourself 2 minutes. The running speed, to start with, should be your 5k speed. If you haven’t run a 5k race, divide your 10k time by two and then deduct about 45 seconds. A 40-minute 10k person might expect to do 5k in 19:15, but a 30-minute 10k man would expect 14:30, and a 50-minute 10k runner would expect 24 minutes for 5k. The appropriate 400m pace is shown in Table 4 below.

5000m speed (mins:secs)	Pace per 400m lap (secs)	5000m speed (mins:secs)	Pace per 400m lap (secs)
15:00	72	20:50	100
15:50	76	21:40	104
16:40	80	22:30	108
17:30	84	23:20	112
18:20	88	23:10	116
19:10	92	25:00	120
20:00	96	25:50	124

Steve Ovett — world class from 400m to the half marathon

Progression

You can progress in three different ways – by running them faster, by cutting down the recovery, or by doing more. We suggest that once you have established what you can do for 8×400m, you move up to doing 10 at the same pace, with the same recovery. As you get fitter you can cut down the recovery jog to 90 seconds. Week by week your average time should come down. When you feel that you have reached a plateau, go back to doing 8 with a 2-minute recovery, and trying to run them a couple of seconds a lap faster.

This 10×400m session, with a shortish recovery, is a very good guide to fitness and can be done anywhere in the world that you can find a track. It tells you exactly where you stand, and it is also good training for anyone running races of 1500m or longer. Where you go from here depends on what your goals are.

Training for middle distance (800–1500m)

Getting the right mixture

In your training you should try to cover all the options. You need at least one main aerobic session a week, and one session which is close to your race pace, but you will also need to do some speedwork. This can be done at the end of a steady run, running over 150m, accelerating up to a sprint and then easing down again, but it is best done by practising in the context of ‘race rehearsal’. Try running 300m stretches with a friend. One leads at the steady pace of the race and the other sits in and then kicks for the last 100 metres. Another way of doing this is to run ‘differential’ 400s, where you run the first 200m at race pace and then kick in a fast second 200m, trying to stay as smooth and efficient as possible.

To fit in all these sessions you need to operate on a cycle which is longer than seven days. This could be a ten-day cycle, which would fit in with a major race every three weeks or a 14-day cycle, allowing for a race every two or four weeks.

Basic middle distance session

This would suit an over-40 runner who has already had 8 weeks of training on the track as outlined above.

All track sessions should be preceded by 15 minutes of warming up and followed by at least five minutes of jogging and five minutes of stretching.

Endurance sessions: 6×2 mins on grass (2 mins jog recovery) or 6×90 secs uphill.

1500m sessions: 2×(4×400m) at race pace or faster, with 2 mins recovery between each 400m and an extra 2 mins between sets, or pyramid of 200m-400m- 600m-800m-600m-400m-200m at race pace, with 60 secs of recovery for each 200m of fast work, i.e. 4 mins recovery after the 800.

800m sessions: 8×200m or 5×300m or 3×400m at race speed, with 2–3 minutes recovery for every 200m of fast work, i.e. 4–6 mins recovery after a fast 400.

Allowances for age. Over 50: do only two of the three sessions down for Tues-Thur-Saturday, substituting an easy jog, gym work or cycling. Over-60: do only one of the three quality sessions, and allow a two or three-day gap between the endurance session and the 1500m or 800m session.

This would be suitable for experienced under-50 athletes aiming at championship races. It includes training at a variety of different paces, as follows:

In a two-week cycle, all of these can be done, with a race or time trial at the end, making six hard sessions in two weeks:

If Sunday is used for a long easy run and Friday is a rest day, the other days of the week can be used for easy recuperation runs, or for Fartlek if you recover quickly.

Allowances for age

Over-50: Keep to the same frequency, but reduce the volume of each quality session by one-third and have at least one complete rest day per week.

Training for 5000m and 10000m

The same principles described for the middle distance runners apply here, but because there is only a small anaerobic element involved in these distances, most of the training is aerobic. However, the speed work and the speed endurance sessions must not be ignored, because these are the ones which have the maximum stimulation effect on the body. The basic track training session will total 5000–6000m of fast work for the 5000m runner, and 8000m to over 10000m of fast work for the serious 10k runner.

Basic 5000m sessions

Interval 400m runs should start at 12×400m and work up to 15×400m. A good way of doing them is to run 800m followed by a recovery jog and then 400m. Five sets of (800+400m) is less wearing mentally than a full 15×400m.

Basic 10000m sessions

The standard distance here is usually 800m or 1000m, so one would do 8–10 reps of these for a full session, but occasionally do 6–8×1200m or 4–6×1600m.

Age allowances

Over-50s need go only up to 12×400m or 6×1000m, 0ver-60s to 10×400m, 5×1000m.

Faster reps or shorter rests?

This is one of running oldest controversies, and we suspect that the way people respond depends on temperament as much as on logic. Are you, basically, a Cavalier or a Roundhead?, An Italian or a Swede? There are some people who just love to run fast laps, even if their recovery time is fifteen minutes, while others like to go for high volume, even though their training speed may be slower than their races. The situation, with which we are all familiar, is that you have a standard training session – it might be five times a mile with 3 mins recovery for a serious road runner, or 6×800m with 2 mins recovery for a track runner. You started doing them in January, pretty slowly, but by March you were running them almost as fast as your race speed, and by April you were averaging something a little faster than your race speed. Do you aim to run still faster in the next session, on the principle that ‘the harder I train, the better I get’ or try something else?

When you were young and improving season by season, there was an argument for speeding up. Part of training is learning how hard you can push yourself, and this only comes from experience. You extend your limits and a time which was impossible last year becomes easy this year. Now we are mature runners, however, the law of diminishing returns sets in. We have to pick the session which is going to do us the most good, in relation to a particular target. If your 5×1 mile is aimed at racing in the 10k to 10 miles range, then it has got to be at 10k pace, a bit faster than threshold. You are accumulating blood lactate and your pulse rate is going up, if you tried to run them, say five seconds a mile faster, you would get a much higher lactate level, which could be damaging. You can cut down the recovery interval, using your pulse as a guide, this tells you that you are getting fitter, but probably does not have much effect on your performance. However, if you increase the distance run, say to 2000m or to a mile-and-a-half, and keep to the same pace or the same pulse rate, you will be training yourself to be more efficient and more enduring at that pace.

On the track it is easier, because you can easily add or subtract 200m or 400m to each rep. If your 5000m target is 17 minutes, then you need to get used to running 10–15×400m in 82 seconds. Your recovery time will start at say, a 200m jog in 2 minutes and then come down to 60 seconds flat. When it becomes easy to run 15×400m in that way, you should be mixing in 600s and 800s at that speed, with equal-time recovery. Your session might become 2×400m, 5×800m, 2×400m, all at 82 seconds a lap pace, with a fast lap at the end, or it might become 5×(800+400m) and eventually 7 or 8×800m.

For a 10000m runner who regularly runs 6×800m on the track, the logical progression would be to move up to 8×800m and then start mixing in 1000m runs. The total distance of fast work should move up from six or seven thousand metres to over eight thousand, with the eventual target being the full ten thou-sand. In our experience, it is mentally easier to do a pyramid session. A session of 400-600-800-1000-1200-1000-800-600-400m adds up to 6800m but is more interesting than 6×1000m and therefore seems to go more quickly. You must be strict with your recovery times, however, if these sessions are to be compared with others.

The important thing is to remember what the session is for. If it is to increase your efficiency at race pace, then stay around race pace, with longer distances and shorter recoveries. If it is designed to prepare you for a hard race, then you have to get used to high blood lactate levels – running fast when tired. In this situation you would do ‘speed endurance’ sessions – fast runs over 1000–2000m, with long recoveries, say four to six minutes. However, we would only recommend one or two of these sessions in the last few weeks before your competitive peak. You should never lose sight of the fact that training is specific to races. Cultivate the skill of running efficiently at race pace.

A suitable schedule for a good veteran distance runner, aiming for times such as 3000m sub-9:30 (men) or sub 11:00 (women), 5000m sub-16:00 (men) or sub-18:00 (women) would be:

Allowances for age

Over-50: Only two hard sessions per week and allow one day for complete rest. Over-60: As for over-50, but reduce volume of hard sessions by one-third.

Variety in training

Steve Mottershead teaches and coaches at Millfield School. As a young man he trained very hard – 70 miles a week – but never reached more than good club stan-dard as a distance runner. After turning 40 he changed to shorter distances, running less than 40 miles a week and doing more speed work. When he started to include weight training and gym work in his training, he noticed a marked improvement in performance, and at the age of 49 set a lifetime best of 54 seconds for 400 metres, more than 1 second faster than his previous best. Moreover, he can still run a respectable marathon. The moral of this is that you should always remain open-minded about trying new methods of making progress.

STEVE JAMES

Age: 69

Occupation: retired IT manager

When Bruce was a postgraduate at Cambridge in 1959, Steve James was an Oxford undergraduate – and a brilliant miler. In the annual Oxford-Cambridge cross-country match he beat me soundly.

His career highlights go:

1959: National Junior cross-country champion

Inter-Counties 3 miles champion
1993: World Veterans 10000m champion

World record-holder for 5000m (over-55)
1995: World Veterans 10000m champion (over-55)
1998: World record-holder for 5000m (over-60)

After leaving Oxford, his professional career and family commitments restricted his running, so we shall never know what heights he might have reached, but his performances as a veteran suggest that he would have performed well at Olympic level. His British best of 33 mins 29 secs for 10k on the road, at the age of 60, was only one of many awesome performances.

Why do you like running? ‘Why do we like doing anything? Some of the things I like include being in a team, training in pleasant surroundings, travelling to interesting places and having targets to aim at. I enjoy it much more when the social side is good — the club is important. Running has been such a normal part of my life that I get itchy feet if I haven’t been for a run for a day or two – my body seems to need it.’

What motivates you to go on competing? ‘That is the best part!’

How do you fit in work, training and family? ‘The only answer has been to do less training than is required. In my first four years in industry we lived in five different houses. When we became more settled I did cross-country, on only 20–30 miles a week. In my forties, having flexible working hours was a great help – now I’m retired, there is rarely a problem.’

How has your approach changed, since reaching 40? ‘I did very little track running in my thirties and forties, so forty was not really a landmark. It meant two more cross-country races a year, but gradually the British Veterans cross-country became the main target of the year. At 52 I went to the World Vets in Eugene, Oregon, and I’ve been going to the World and European championships ever since. I still put in some hard training sessions, but I can’t do as many in a week without getting over-tired.’