Sergio Borges
Running in triathlon is completely different from pure road racing. In triathlon, since swimming and cycling come before the run, athletes have a limited range of motion in their legs caused by tight and overused muscles (e.g., hip flexors, hamstrings, quads). This limited range of motion will prevent athletes from bringing their legs as high during the recovery phase and from bringing their knees as high during the propulsion phase. Therefore, the stride length gets shorter, and the athletes run slower. In addition, the aerobic system is taxed from the swim and bike, also increasing fatigue. This chapter explains how to train for triathlon running, helping you be more effective and race faster while minimizing injuries.
Run Training Components
It’s important to understand the components of training when designing your training plan for triathlon running. If you’re looking to improve your run, each of the following components needs to be part of your training, but they are forgotten by many athletes—especially the first two—because most just want to put on their shoes and head out the door.
Sport-Specific Motor Patterns
Motor patterns are neural networks that endogenously (i.e., without rhythmic sensory or central input) produce rhythmic patterned outputs or “neural circuits” that generate periodic motor commands for rhythmic movements such as locomotion. In simpler terms, they are particular sequences of muscle movements directed to accomplishing an external purpose. A great way to improve your motor patterns in running is through repetition. By repeating certain training sets over a number of weeks, you learn to do the following.
Improve Motor Skills
Via specific training sessions using a flat treadmill (0 percent incline helps you move forward more easily), you can work on increasing stride rate, thereby reducing the time spent on the ground and causing less eccentric load on your quads. You’ll “program your body” to perform the way you want.
Train Concentration Skills
Repeating the same workout with the same effort and duration allows you to shift emphasis from aerobic levels of effort to form. Repetition training encourages you to develop greater levels of focus and concentration that will help you in racing and increase the effectiveness of your workouts.
Develop Intuition
Over time, athletes who train with repetitions develop a keen ability to feel how they are doing on any given day, through factors such as muscle soreness, fatigue, energy levels, and motivation.
Anticipate Training
Repetition provides a predictable and structured routine that you can adhere to without compromising sound training principles, while making more efficient use of your time. This is especially true for age-group, or amateur, triathletes.
Track Performance
With repetitions, you don’t need to undergo physiological testing or test yourself over race distances in training—instead, your training ensures that you can track your improvements in each sport every week.
Gauge Fatigue
The interactive process means you learn quickly how to determine whether on one of “those” days you are truly tired and need rest or are merely “off.”
Build Consistency
Repetition training also helps you accurately interpret your body’s signals over time and to better apply these to maintain training consistency.
Stride Rate
Efficiency in triathlon running comes from the ability to run fast on fatigued and tight legs. To be able to do this, you must develop a naturally high leg turnover (about 94 to 96 steps per leg per minute), or stride rate, which is essentially a running style that is more like “shuffle running,” where the focus is on a higher turnover to overcome the shortening in the stride. High-cadence running becomes even more important during long-distance races such as the Ironman, in which the distance will add an extra level of fatigue on your legs, thereby reducing your stride length even more. By running with a lower stride rate, your second half of an Ironman will be much slower or even turn to a walk. A lot of practice is needed to develop a high stride rate because your body at first is not used to the neuromuscular pattern of firing your muscles so quickly. Also, running at a high stride rate increases your heart rate and is aerobically taxing, so this running style works better if you haven’t exhausted these components on the bike (e.g., by riding at a lower cadence). Contrary to the claims of some, it is possible to learn how to run with a faster stride rate as second nature during races. By thinking about breaking the work up into more pieces and aiming for a high stride rate in all the training runs, you will naturally learn a more efficient, triathlon-adapted stride.
Most elite runners run anywhere between 92 and 94 strides per leg per minute. I recommend 96 because it divides easily by 6, 4, and 3, meaning you can easily track the consistency of your strides per leg per minute over 10, 15, or 20 seconds at time. When tired, particularly late in an Ironman, you won’t necessarily run at this rate, but by training for it and by constantly striving to hit this stride rate in training, you will naturally adopt a rate in the low to mid-90s without having to make much of a concerted effort during a race.
Using a flat treadmill and a slightly downhill gradient can help you develop a more fluid, naturally high stride rate. Both techniques enable you to run quicker than on flat land at the same aerobic stress level. Using a half- to 1-mile (.8 to 1.6 km) loop that includes a short, steeper uphill and a long, gradual downhill component, you can structure a lactate tolerance session. This is a workout meant to help an athlete handle higher loads of lactate training by training at or above current lactate threshold levels. This approach also provides the opportunity to stride it out and incorporate the mechanics of a high-speed session into the workout. By including such gravity-assisted running in the session, you develop your motor skills.
Unless you are doing a lactate tolerance session, keep treadmill sessions at a 0 percent gradient. As noted, you can train your muscles and nerves to fire at a higher rate of speed than on the road or track at the same aerobic load. This way, you train your legs to run faster for longer, sustained efforts without blowing up aerobically if you run at that pace for that duration on the road or track. You get higher-quality motor pattern training and a more effective training session this way.
Leg Speed
Leg speed is a direct result of elasticity (the ability to “fire” the muscles quicker when running), and athletes must teach their brains how to fire their muscles quicker to improve stride rate and leg speed. Especially as we get older, we lose our natural elasticity, and repetition drills should be performed frequently to prevent running slower. More and more aging athletes are maintaining run speed. Keeping the elasticity is one of the reasons they can sustain speed. Following are a couple of my favorite running drills that will help you with elasticity.
Marching
Lift your knee and foot and the opposite arm, as in a military march. Drive your foot down to the ground as you lift the opposite knee, foot, and arm. Move forward, alternating legs and arms. Make sure you maintain perfect posture, keeping the toes pulled up to the shin and pushing the trail foot down and back through the ground, with the hip going into full extension. Initiate movement from the glutes, and drive your elbows back as the opposite leg attacks the ground. Do three sets of 20 to 30.
Wall Running
Stand with your left side against a wall. Place your left hand on the wall. Lift your left thigh to parallel, and lift your right heel off the ground while maintaining a straight line through the ear, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle, and hold. Drive the left foot down and back. Quickly return to the start position by bringing the left foot toward the left hip, using a circular movement. Repeat two more times as quickly as possible and hold. Do two or three sets of five and switch sides.
Mobility
Like elasticity, mobility, an increase in range of motion, is overlooked by most athletes (again, especially older athletes). To be able to run faster, your muscles need to have sufficient range of motion to allow your legs to move efficiently with less effort. The more mobile you are, the higher you can move your legs because your muscles will not be constricting the movement. You can work on increasing your mobility through dynamic stretching, myofascial release (the application of gentle pressure to the myofascial connective tissue restrictions to eliminate pain and restore motion), or running drills such as those described previously.
Strength and Power
Triathlon is an endurance sport, but strength and power are required to perform at your best. With three disciplines to train for, it’s difficult to find more time to concentrate on specific strength training, as everything seems geared toward building stamina and endurance. Surely all that training on its own is enough to build the strength you’ll need, right? Let’s look at that question differently—who doesn’t think their race performances would improve if they were stronger? All things being equal, the stronger you are, the more power you’re able to generate, and the faster you’re able to go. It’s important to understand that you’re aiming to maximize your power–weight ratio, not your pure strength. Building pure strength involves increasing muscle bulk—not a good idea for endurance events such as triathlon.
The importance of power, even in endurance sports, can be seen in one simple fact. All of us can complete an Olympic-distance triathlon, but very few deliver enough power to finish in under 2 hours. So the question is not whether you have enough fuel to complete the race, but whether you can keep burning it at a high enough rate throughout the event. In addition to being crucial for power, being stronger also makes you more resilient and less susceptible to injury.
It’s important to recognize that swimming, biking, and running alone don’t produce overloads specific enough to generate significant strength gains. These activities are too aerobically based—you simply get tired before you start developing strength. Therefore, particularly during the off-season, it’s beneficial to work on specific strength training activities, such as circuit or weight training, along with building your base fitness. Once you’ve developed greater strength, you can use it in your triathlon-specific training.
The off-season is the ideal time to change the emphasis of your training and incorporate strength and mobility sessions into your schedule. You will want to maintain a strength training program throughout the year to help with performance, but during the off-season you can focus more on strength when you are not swimming, biking, and running as much. For example, if you’re running four times a week, swimming three times a week, and getting out on the bike twice, you should still have time for some specific strength work. These sessions could be added to the end of an easy run or swim if time is a problem. You can do a few strength exercises that focus on any areas of weakness you might have or exercises that help prevent injuries.
Running on Fatigued Legs
If you have done a triathlon, you’ve probably noticed how “heavy” and fatigued your legs feel when you get off the bike. For many, this feeling is still a surprise and the reason for many postrace talks: “My legs felt so heavy, I couldn’t run!” If you train your body and brain to perform efficiently on fatigued legs, you will run faster and will not be surprised on race day.
In many years of coaching, I have seen athletes planning a light or recovery workout the day before their key run session so they can have a high-quality workout on “fresh” legs. This has caused many athletes to get injured or at the very least sore (losing training consistency) because their muscles are too fresh, so they damage their bodies much more. Also athletes using this method rarely mimic the paces they run in a race. In a triathlon, your legs are already tight and fatigued, and the aerobic system is taxed, and they are never fresh.
It is important for triathletes to build what I call an insurance policy. To reduce the chances of injury, severe muscle soreness, and training at unrealistic paces, the workout on the day before your key run session should be very muscle demanding (weight training or hill repeats on the bike at a lower cadence) so you will start your hard run already fatigued. You can also do a run session where you develop high fatigue first, then a short speed session with a focus on leg speed. For example, do a few stair repeats before 400- to 800-meter intervals on the track.
Running on fatigued legs will also help you become efficient when tired, which is key for triathlon running. If you did not have the chance to do a demanding workout the day before your key run session, do a long warm-up of about 40 minutes instead; this will create a little bit of fatigue, building your “insurance policy.”
Also, when running speed cannot be developed much further, shifting emphasis toward leg strength instead of speed using longer, hilly runs can be a way of filling gaps that have developed in your fitness during the course of the season. Although circuits and weight training are good, you’ll need some specific training to build strength. Track training and cross country or hill running are all great ways to build leg and core strength.
Speed
Speed and LT (lactate tolerance) sessions are highly specific for triathlon training and need to be part of your training program, but as mentioned previously, you need to be very careful with frequency and length of intervals so you do not get injured or burned out. Speed can be developed by performing short-duration, high-intensity intervals. You can use the treadmill to control variables and to provide week-to-week performance benchmarking opportunities; on the road, use gentle downhill gradients to enable high-speed efforts at lower aerobic stress. Both will help increase range of motion, stride power, and corresponding motor skills. Keep the intervals short (30 to 45 seconds) with a long recovery, about twice the interval time. Speed work can be combined with endurance cycling sessions to more effectively train leg speed after a long bike session and to break up sluggishness of your legs.
LT sessions are race-specific efforts, with intervals of 1 to 20 minutes. The sessions should be limited to 30-45 minutes because of the high stress on the body. Avoid LT efforts without first tiring the muscles—this caps your ability to damage yourself. Sessions can be a typical negative-split effort, such as 20 minutes easy, 15 minutes at half-Ironman effort, and 10 minutes at 10K effort. A great workout that combines the speed and LT systems is to use a hilly loop to train form under duress. By running uphill hard and spiking your HR, then running with a high stride rate on a slight downhill gradient, you will have an opportunity to train a fast stride rate at a high aerobic stress load. The gentle gradient helps maintain form.
Endurance
Endurance is one component of training that most athletes usually overemphasize. It’s important to remember that endurance is also trained by your other two sports, so because of the high injury risk in running, volume should be controlled. It is recommended to do one traditional long run a week where you control the effort to avoid too much catabolic effect. You can also include short, fast efforts during the run to reduce leg sluggishness. Try to maintain your focus on a high stride rate during the entire run. To speed up your recovery, complement your long run with heavy weight training or speed-swim training later in the day (short 15- to 25-meter swim intervals with plenty of easy recovery). Strength training in the gym or the short, fast session in the pool will promote an anabolic response to balance the catabolic (breaking down muscle) damage of the long run.
Volume and Intensity
When athletes get excited, usually after their first season, the first thought that comes to their minds is “If I train longer and harder, I can go faster.” This statement is not totally wrong—if you can go harder and longer, you will get faster—but the problem is recovery. The ideal would be to train hard every day, but we all know our bodies can’t recover from that level of training intensity and load, and if we train like that, we will end up crashing and burning. I believe all athletes have their own tolerance for intensity and volume; some can do more, some have to do less. I like to always err on the side of less rather than give an athlete too much and he ends up injured or burned out. Make sure you restrict the number of long runs you do a week (only one is recommended), and make sure when you’re doing intervals to keep it short, maintaining the quality you have planned. “Junk miles” will not make you faster, just train you how to run slower and inefficiently.
Another important thing to remember is to pay attention to your RPE, as discussed in chapter 9 on page 119. Every day you have different fatigue levels, with many different causes, including stress, lack of sleep, too much red wine the night before, the beginning of an illness, and so on. So you cannot expect your body to react the same every day. One day, a moderate effort of 8 minutes per mile will feel more like a hard pace because of higher fatigue, but another day 6 minutes per mile could feel easy. It is best to learn how your body feels during the efforts you want and use it as the guide for your intensity.
Here are some key factors to consider when planning the volume and intensity of your run training:
Body Type
You have probably noticed that elite runners have a very slim physique and are very light in terms of body weight. This is the ideal body type for running, allowing these athletes to do high-volume and high-intensity training. High volume and intensity are not applicable for most triathletes, who have bigger and more muscular legs and a developed upper body from swim training. Because of the impact of the foot landing on the ground, the heavier you are, the more damage you will cause your muscles and joints when performing intervals. Therefore, if you’re a bit overweight or very muscular, you have to be very careful with the volume and intensity of running in your training. So if you look more like a bodybuilder, be careful with the short, high-intensity intervals or use the build (easy to fast) intervals instead.
Biomechanics
We often see athletes running with poor form, and some of them run long and run several times a week, increasing their risk of getting injured. Running, like cycling and swimming, is a repetitive motion sport, so if you don’t have proper mechanics, you will eventually injure yourself if you run too frequently or do too high a volume. The more efficient you are mechanically, the more (volume and frequency) you can run, so before you compare your training with your friend or a professional athlete, first check how efficient they look when running.
Be aware that in running, eccentric (lengthening) muscle contractions occur both in the quadriceps and the calf muscles with each step when you land. This is exaggerated, especially in the upper thigh (quadriceps muscles), during downhill running because the forces that pass through these muscles can equal three times the body weight, particularly as the foot lands on the ground. The initial contraction of the quadriceps is not quite strong enough to overcome this force; thus this muscle is stretched in an eccentric contraction for a brief instance every time either foot hits the ground. Muscles were not designed for repetitive eccentric contractions and are susceptible to damage when forced to contract this way. This explains why downhill running can be especially painful and why it takes so much longer for postrace muscle stiffness to go away after downhill races than it does after uphill or flat races.
Background
Running background is another important factor when designing your training. If you have been running for several years, you probably have developed better movement mechanics and have trained your body to withstand the impact and eccentric load on your joints and muscles. Usually, several years of running (repetitive motion of the movement) would result in efficiency as long as you have not been injured too often in the process.
Age
As we get older, our joints and muscles get weaker, and our ability to recover from long and hard workouts is compromised. We do not produce our hormones at the same level as when we were 20 years old, so the frequency of long and hard workouts has to be meticulously planned. The challenge for older athletes is trying to stay healthy for the important races.
Injury History
If you have been injured in the past, you should start creating body awareness so you can read the signs your body sends to you and avoid getting injured again. If every time you do short, high-intensity intervals, for example, you get injured, well, maybe your body is telling you that type of effort is not recommended for you (even if you have done it several times before). The same idea applies to determining the volume of your long-endurance runs. If every time you run more than 90 minutes you are very sore, take a long time to recover, or even worse, get injured, you have found your limit.
Also note that you are more likely to injure yourself while running than while swimming or cycling, so you need to pay more attention to order and structure when planning the distribution of run sessions. If you’re new to running, ease into it gradually. This also applies to those returning from injury. For example, an effective return from injury might be a three-runs-per-week routine alternating running and walking, gradually increasing the duration of the run component.
Gender
In my experience in coaching, female athletes tend to recover quicker and can handle more intensity and higher training volume than males. A lot has to do with size (usually females are much lighter than males) and hormones (women’s hormones allow them to recover quicker and therefore train harder and longer).
Run Training Strategies and Workouts
Run training should be adjusted during each phase of the season to make sure you are ready for competition. In the prep phase, if you have been running, you can do three to five running workouts per week. These can be 20 to 45 minutes in duration and should be done at a low intensity, focusing on your form. If you haven’t been running, start with run–walk sessions 3 days per week until you can run continuously for 20 minutes. As you move into the base phase, start doing longer-endurance runs and increase your speed work. You will be running 3 or 4 days per week. During the build phase, your volume will decrease as your intensity rises. You’ll still be running 3 or 4 days per week. During the peak phase, your intensity will increase, but your volume will drop. You’ll be running 2 or 3 days per week, and one of those runs should be off the bike. During the race phase, your intensity will be high, but your volume will be significantly lower. You’ll be running 2 or 3 days per week, with one run off the bike. During the off-season, your goal should be to maintain your fitness by running 2 or 3 days per week or cross-training. Great cross-training activities include cross-country skiing, soccer, and hiking.
It’s very important to understand that to improve your running, you need to always have three key workout sessions—strength, speed, and endurance—in your training week all year round. The following sample week incorporates all three sessions for an average age-group athlete who runs three times per week and is training for an Olympic-distance triathlon.
Monday
Brick session: Bike strength (60 minutes) and run lactate tolerance and speed (27 minutes) immediately after the bike workout as race simulation. Run: Three sets of 3, 2, 1 minutes at 10K effort (85 to 90 percent) with 1-minute easy jog between.
Tuesday
Long-endurance swim (45 minutes) and weight training (30 minutes).
Wednesday
Strength session: Hill repeats (45 to 60 minutes); 10-minute easy jog as warm-up, running drills, 10 minutes easy to moderate. Find a hill that is not too steep (4 to 6 percent grade), and do three sets of 5 × 1 minute, building from moderate to hard (90 to 95 percent effort). Use 3-minute easy jogs between sets and an easy jog-down as recovery, followed by a 10-minute cool-down and regeneration (e.g., stretch, massage). Note: If you have not run much, start with two sets of 5 × 30 seconds and build to the routine just described. Swim: Recovery (30 minutes).
Thursday
Bike lactate tolerance (race effort) (45 to 60 minutes).
Friday
Run endurance session: Trail, treadmill, or road (45 to 75 minutes). Start very easy for the first 10 minutes, build to easy to moderate. Remember the goal is to increase your endurance, so intensity should be at 65 to 75 percent effort. As mentioned previously in this chapter, volume has to be carefully planned based on the six components (body type, biomechanics, background, injury history, gender, age). Be safe, and always start conservative and progress as you feel your body adapting to the training.
Saturday
Day off or high-quality swim workout (45 minutes).
Sunday
Bike endurance session: 2 to 3 hours at moderate effort.
It’s important to understand that triathlon running is not the same as a running race because of the limited range of motion, fatigued muscles, taxed aerobic system, and taxed neuromuscular system. Each athlete should train differently, with corresponding intensity and volume based on what the body can tolerate. Be aware of your body, rather than the pace you’re training, so you don’t destroy your muscles and joints. Teach your body how to run efficiently on fatigued legs. It’s the most important thing in triathlon running!