Winter Training for College Runners

Note: I wrote this on New Year’s Eve 2010, but was unable to finish until today, which makes it a bit dated as this post is intended to help collegiate runners on winter break and college coaches who can share this with their most serious athletes.

A little bit of backstory. My college PRs for 1,500m, 3k and 5k all came as part of a double. My sophomore year I ran 14:20 on calm Friday night at Mt. Sac; Sunday morning I came back and ran 3:49.5 for 1,500m. My fifth year I ran roughly 14:22 for 5k (may have been 14:20 again, don’t know for sure) on Friday evening and 8:20 for 3k Saturday afternoon at the Big 12 indoor meet, held in Ahern Fieldhouse in Manhattan, Kansas. Obviously those times are pedestrian comparied to current CU athletes, but at the time those PRs – when I could run them – allowed me to travel to most of the cool meets. Today, the last day of 2010, I’d like to share some thoughts on those indoor PRs for the simple reason that most college distance runners will be running at their conference meet in eight or nine weeks and I’d like to be of help.

The cross country season that preceded those performances is important as it’s the foundation for running faster at a specific pace. Actually, that last sentence is holds true for runners of average to moderate talent; the Freaks can get away with not training, with not building a foundation of fitness, with not focusing their mind on a single goal. The Freaks will be out tonight, partying their butts off and yes, the Freaks may very well run well indoors and outdoors, but for most college runners, a solid foundation of fitness in cross country is the foundation for fast times indoors and outdoors. Anyway, I ran cross country in 1998 and Chris Lear wrote a book about it; Lear’s book shows that I was horrible in August and decent(ish) in November. I was extremely busy academically as a graduate student with teaching responsibilities. I didn’t train well during finals, but once home (up to 6,000 feet from Boulder’s 5,200 ft) I started to train well. So that’s the preface – decent cross country season, not a great start to December, but once home I could train. So that’s the backstory…and here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Fluffy snow is not bad; running slow is not bad; hills are not bad. I ran several runs of 90-100 minutes each week where I didn’t crack 8 minutes, yet my heart and lungs were working at “6:30 pace effort” because I’d run on single-track trials in several inches of snow. I’d run in Castlewood Canyon, alone or with my girlfriend’s dog, as much as I could and between the snow, the technical nature of single track running and the topography, it was tough going. For faster running I’d go to a system of dirt roads outside town that were shorter than I guessed, but hillier than I had remembered. Again, the running was slower than it would have been in Boulder, even when the roads were dry.

The reason I think this type of running is important is that because the proprioceptive demand is so much higher running on snow than running on a dry track (as you’re making micro adjustments with every foot landing and takeoff). Basically, you’re becoming a better athlete and you’e strengthening everything from your lower leg to your hip and butt when you’re running on a slippery surface. Now, I’m not saying ice, but rather this “dry” snow that we get here – snow that squeaks when you step on it. In terms of structural injuries, you’re not running that fast, so if you’re a bit overweight (which I tended to be, especially in December) you’re not dealing with as much force related stress; 8:00 on snow isn’t as stressful to your lower tibia as 6:00 on concrete.

If you’ve read this blog you know that I firmly believe that injuries often happen because the engine is better than the chassis. While you’re still building the engine on these runs – 8:00 on a snowy trail is harder than you think – the bigger stressor for most collegiate athletes is the neural stimulus and muscular stimulus. Now, you still can get hurt – IT band or groin – by having a micro-adjustment with each landing, but my experience is that the injuries come when you fight the surface, trying to run your normal pace. So DON’T fight the surface, just run on top of it. (Note: No discussion of knee angle or posture above, but we can chat about that and possible benefits and limitations in the comments section).

2. Reset your sleep cycle. I wish this said “reset diet and sleep” but I struggled to reset the diet at home, yet the opportunity sleep was always welcome (especially since the snowy runs tended to leave me “body tired” in a way normal training didn’t). Sleep is so undervalued by college student athletes; if a 6 hour a night, 80 mile a week runner would just get 8-9 hours of sleep per night for a month, they’d be shocked how much better they would feel and how much better they could train. Sleep is the biggest indicator for me with the elites I work with that we’re doing real training as they simply have to have more sleep when we into “real training.” Obviously college athletes heading back to school have to get back into an academic routine, but the break is an opportunity to practice that routine – to “reset” – so that when school starts you’re already in the habit of being in bed on time.

3. When the surface is safe, fartlek. That’s all I really did that winter. Sometimes it was just one minute on and two minutes off, the easiest fartlek both mentally and physically. Sometimes I’d try to do eight or ten on, three to five off, but that was killer as I’d look at my watch, thinking I’d seen five minutes run, only to see that I was just three minutes into the rep. Either way, these workouts were important because I’d have to be able to hang with the guys (“hammer or get hammered”) when I returned to Boulder, so I’d need to deal with a bit of lactate.

Yes, lactate. I think good fartleks are run so that the runner produces a bit of lactate and then keeps the pace solid, so that the body had to deal with it. It’s different than threshold running or tempo running (more on both in the coming months) where the goal is to be right at some amount of lactate. But let’s be honest, I wasn’t thinking about this stuff – even tough I probably should have been, a graduate student in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology – when I was out on those fartlek runs, instead I was just running hard, running steady, then running hard again.

4. I may have been soft.

…this is a long one…which means I probably need a editor. Bear with me.

While I would not have admitted it at the time, even if I had known it, it’s now obvious to me that Mike Friedburg was tougher much tougher than I was, as was Chris Severy. Shoot, maybe everyone in Running with the Buffaloes was tougher than me, who knows. I know this: Mike Friedburg had to run the Dam run for an entire track season every weekend Wetmore was out of town for a meet. The Dam run is simply a 10 mile out and back run on concrete, starting on campus, paralleling Broadway, then traversing the Boulder Creek Path until you hit the Dam, at which point you flip. While the “damn” was just a small concrete wall in the middle of a pond, the Dam run could easily be called the Damn run as it was basically a race, a race which I did not excel. If twelve guys run, I’d be tenth to twelfth, yet usually I was in the top ten on the team’s depth cart (by current track performances). I think I broke 58:00 once, whereas most of the 14:20 or faster guys have a 55 something to their credit. You could say I raced better than I trained, which was probably true, but I don’t think that accounts fully for the discrepancy. Friedburg, however, survived and became a three-time cross country All-American. This fall, at Adam Batliner’s wedding, Mike reminded me that there was a very liberal walk-on policy the year he came in and that there were almost a dozen guys on those initial winter Dam runs (winter 1998), yet by the end of the spring it was just Friedburg.

…which comes back to the point. While I remember being tough in a couple of the races in Running with the Buffaloes, I have no doubt that by an objective measure Mike was tougher. The Dam makes you tough, way tougher than repeat 400′s on a minute rest; 400′s have their place for the long distance runner, but as coaches we all need to make sure that we’re callousing athletes psychologically for the demands of their race. I’d say that for 10k cross country the Dam does a damn good job of that. I could probably have hung with or close to Mike in 10x400m with 60 sec in the days prior to the 1998 NCAA Cross Country meet, yet there is no way I could have run within three minutes of him on the Dam; at the NCAA meet he was an All-American and I was just the sixth guy on the third place team. While I’m happy to discuss the physiological reasons for this in the comments, the real point is this:

I never injured myself in the winter because I wasn’t a “go out and kill yourself on the roads” kind of guy.

…and if you coach that guy, find a way to hold him back a bit, so he doesn’t show up to campus injured (with an injury that won’t be good as it will likely be a stress reaction or serious IT band).

5. I didn’t care if I sucked indoors. This one is simple. I was focused on outdoors and when workouts and races went poorly I didn’t care. This was preached to us Wetmore – that indoors was secondary to outdoors – yet I’m confident I took that to heart and did my best to “pace myself.” Related is that I was so damn busy with school and teaching assistant responsibilities that I simply couldn’t brood over bad workouts. I didn’t shake off a bad race as well, but much better than in the past. Ironically, after running indoors well I went on to ran poorly outdoors (I can share that someday), but the point is that when you’re showing up for practice and working hard every day you’re going to have some crappy workouts and possibly a bad race. With HS kids and with some/most elites I don’t believe in this, but for College kids, who are asked to run so many races between the three seasons, I think you need to be willing to give a bit on the specifics – running some flat workouts or races – and downplaying indoors in favor of staying healthy. Which leads to the final one…

6. I didn’t race workouts. Simple, right? Well, it took me five years to learn this. I don’t think I raced them nearly as much as some other guys, but as I write this I can see those guys running across the track and it’s obvious now the difference: Talent, capital T.

I was one of seven guys from Colorado recruited to CU over a two year period; six of the seven were multi-time Colorado state champs in either cross country or track; six become All-Americans. I’m the seventh guy. Now, by no means am I making an objective or definitive evaluation of who is talented and who is not, but this fact provides a bit of comfort now, a decade plus later (though at the time it simply made me a bit crazy to become an All-American, status I never achieved). Here’s the point: Talent, capital T, lets the Talented get away with things in training that the moderately talented can’t. There were numerous workouts where I thought I ran within myself, because it didn’t feel like a race, yet my guess is that if I could have observed that runner now, he was pressing to stay with the rest of the group. But my fifth year, I didn’t press, no doubt in part because I spent August and September running workouts with the freshmen, so I was done worry about training with my “peers” (who may have been been “above my head” to begin with).

That’s the point, “ideal training” is the goal, not hard training or killer training. Obviously coaches and athletes have to move toward this goal together and I can’t tell you what it’s going to look like, but I can share that at the beginning of indoors I was training with the freshman and by the end I was training with the best guys on the team (as Goucher had graduated and a couple studs had little niggles). The progression from hanging back in workouts – or being assigned to the back – early during indoors is probably a good thing, especially if your in a program with a heavy aerobic emphasis where there are other sessions (long run, threshold run, fartlek) that’ll fatigue you as well.

So that’s it. Some thoughts for coaches and athletes regarding winter and indoors. I look forward to your comments.