How to Get Better at Running: What You Don't Want to Hear
/The Beauty of Running
Let's go ahead and admit it, we as humans are competitive. It is something that has developed and shaped us since we first appeared on this earth. Without it, survival would be highly unlikely and improvement would be non-existent. I believe a lot of modern societal standards have cast competition in a negative light though. It is as if competition is something reserved for professional athletes, gladiators, and untrustworthy individuals. Often times I hear people say, "I'm just not that competitive." Well, I'm not buying it. Everyone is competitive at something. Normally it is the thing we are best at doing. People are scared to say they are competitive at something if they aren't good at it. Guess what, if you were competitive at it, you would eventually be good at it. However, let's get to how competitiveness applies to running. Obviously, the majority of you reading this (including myself) are not elite runners. And that is okay. We don't have to compare ourselves to the best in the world whenever we do something. Imagine if you decided to never cook another omelet again because yours wasn't as good as Gordon Ramsey's or if you decided to never repair something in your home because you didn't do it like a show on HGTV or if you decided to never help people again because you weren't Mother Teresa. These are all preposterous things to stop doing. The same applies when it comes to running; don't compare yourself to the best, compare yourself to you. And that is the beauty of running: That you don't have to aim to be the best, just better than you were.
How Do I Do That?
As a teacher, I take on a multitude of responsibilities when it comes to my students, but one of the main goals is to "teach" them stuff and "prove" that they learned it. It is the awesome cycle of assessment. I have a set goal of the things I want my students to learn in a set amount of time and after the allotted time, I assess how much they actually learned. Sometimes they learn it all and sometimes they don't. If they learned it all, then we move on, but if they didn't then we go back and try again from a different perspective. This applies the same way to running. You need to set a goal to achieve in an allotted amount of time, work towards that goal, and then after the time assess whether or not you achieved that goal. If you did, great set another one. If you didn't, great let's try again from a different perspective.
It is important to remember to set "realistic goals." If I were teaching my students, I wouldn't set a goal for them to know the name of every country and it's capital by the end of the week. The same goes for your running goals. Set something that is slightly better than where you are now and see if you can beat it. This is where the help of a running coach or knowledgeable runner would be beneficial. They could give you an appropriate goal based on what you have done in the past. If you don't have previous experience running or in the race you will be running that is fine for two reasons. 1. Literally everything you do while training for it will be beating your previous best (we call that a PR or PB). 2. You can guess your predicted race time off of other race distances. A really good and easy distance to predict almost any race off of is your best mile time. Go run a mile as fast as you can and use that as your starting point.
From that starting point you can now begin to get better at running. It is important to think of getting better at running as a long term goal. Don't narrow your view and think about just this year. Think about how good do you want to be in 5 years and what you need to do this year in order to accomplish that. This is why you are suppose to train in "Cycles." Here is the information you won't find with a simple google search of "How to get better at running" because people do not want to hear this.
Cycles
Cycles are the key to getting better at running. If you run them properly over the course of years, you will get exponentially better I guarantee it. The hard pill for most people to swallow is the fact that week after week, month after month, and year after year you will need to train if you want to see serious results. I actually believe that everyone on the planet is 3-4 years of cycle training away from qualifying for the Boston Marathon. So what are Cycles? In short, running cycles are periods of time that you train different facets of running with periods of rest in-between. The length of cycles vary depending on what you are training, but suffice it enough that cycles are usually between 10-18 weeks that occur 3-4 times a year. In case you are lost, here is an example of some (not necessarily the ones you will do) training cycles throughout a year:
May 1st- August 1st: Base mileage
August 1st- August 8th: Rest
August 8th- November 8th: Half Marathon training
November 8th- November 22nd: Rest
November 22nd- March 22nd: 5k/10k training
March 22nd- March 29th: Rest
March 29th- May 1st: Strength training
This is super condensed, but year over year it is beneficial to have an outline like this. You can substitute whatever race distance you prefer in the place of "half marathon" and "5k/10k." However, what most runners usually do is train the same mediocre runs from January to January. They lack direction and goals and intensity. If you do an outline like this for an entire year. When you get back to May you will be in exponentially better shape than you were the year before. Which will set you up for success that year, which will set you up for success the year after that, etc.
So What Are You Saying?
Here is a step by step:
- Find a distance you want to race.
- Find out how fast you can run that distance based on your current fitness level.
- Set a reasonable goal for running that distance. (Preferably with advice from a coach)
- Get on a training plan for 10-18 weeks to help you achieve that goal.
- Attempt to achieve your goal.
- Rest/Recover.
- Repeat.