Training for long running
It's wrong to be thinking that doing often long runs is sufficient to improve the performances. You could run a lot for years without any performance improvement.
In fact, long runs don't help to run fast.
To progress in aerobic, you have to consider separately the two notions of power and endurance (Ref.).
Improvement of the power
To increase the speed, you must improve jointly two types of power:
• the consumed power which depends on the maximum oxygen intake (VO2max).
• the produced power which depends on the stride efficiency (MAS).
These two powers are linked with each other by the coefficient of efficiency.
You can evaluate your running aerobic power from your performances with the following calculator:
The required training sessions have various appellations (MAS sessions, short splitting, etc.).
To well understand the objective of these sessions, you must keep in mind that the maximum aerobic power can't be sustained over 7min approximately, which corresponds roughly to a 2000m race.
This distance is only an average reference distance because it can be less for a beginner maintaining his MAS for a maximum of 6min, or more for a specialist maintaining his MAS for a maximum of 8min.
However, as it is not easy to run for 7min at MAS, the distance splitting (or its equivalent time splitting) allows getting a similar or better result from a lesser cost.
The advantage of the method is to give a precise control of the running speed which has to be near the MAS. A split distance of 400m is generally used because one lap of athletic track.
The splitting parameters (running time, recovery time, number of repetitions, number of sets) are defined from the VAM with the following calculator:
Splitting calculator for power improvement
It exists other methods (30/30, fartlek, etc.), but they are more delicate to realize or less accurate, and give consequently more unpredictable results.
Improvement of the endurance
Running regularly on long distances (once a week at least), allows developing the muscular structure (increase of "slow" fibers proportion into muscles) and cardiac power. For that you must be be patient because several months are necessary.
To increase endurance, it is necessary to improve the percentage of power (%MAS) used on the favorite running distance.
You can evaluate your running aerobic endurance from your performances with the following calculator:
Estimation of %MAS and %MAS maxi
The required training sessions have here also various appellations but sometimes incorrect (endurance sessions, long splitting, threshold sessions, etc.)
To manage efficiently your runs, you mustn't run too slowly. Either you do an unique run, or you do a split run.
For an unique run, you must run between 80 and 100% of your possibilities, and check the regularity of the speed (measure of the intermediate times, each 2k for example).
For an split run, you must check your %MAS on the split distance, the goal is to approach the %MAS maximum. Attention, this limit which obviously depends on the race distance, depends of the MAS itself (the largest %MAS are reserved to the largest MAS).
The splitting parameters (running time, recovery time, number of repetitions, number of sets) are defined from the VAM with the following calculator:
Splitting calculator for endurance improvement
J.L