Things Are Going to Be a Little Different This Year

What do 'new skool' coaches, Africa, and Mike all have in common? Allow me to elaborate:

I have given this a lot of thought, and have also heard my share of lectures on exercise physiology regarding training, so I have decided to do things a little differently this year. Last season, Mike seemed always so shocked at the mileage I was putting into my training (some 30 miles a week) for only a 3.1 mile race. But since Zach was helping me out, he was having me do what he does, which seemed to work for him year after year... and that is quite simply to run as long as you can. Quantity. Well, I am now going to make an argument for quality.

Long distance training is primarily aerobic, meaning Oxygen is necessary for most of the cellular metabolism producing ATP(the absolutely necessary component for 'muscular contraction'; running). The more you train at long distances, the better your body gets at aerobically producing ATP. All of the minor components work in better harmony, increasing in efficiency when Oxygen is around. However, aerobic metabolism is slow, and takes a long time to make ATP. But, aerobic metabolism does not produce lactic acid. If it did, your muscles would lock up and give out just as quickly as they do when you are sprinting. So what's the real difference between sprinting and long distance running?

Anaerobic metabolism is the production of ATP in the absence of Oxygen. When your muscles are working so hard that they cannot produce ATP fast enough in aerobic metabolism (remember, this is a SLOW process)as in sprinting, then your muscle cells rely on anaerobic metabolism for quick sources of ATP. When you are sprinting, aerobic metabolism does not have enough time to give you the ATP you need, so anaerobic metabolism is ready and willing. BUT, and it's a big but, anaerobic metabolism produces lactic acid. Lactic acid can build up in the muscle cell, if produced in large enough quantities, and some gets shuttled out of the cell and into the blood to be buffered and chemically altered into H20 and CO2 (which you sweat and breathe off!). And just like training aerobically with long distances makes you better at making ATP with Oxygen around, training anaerobically with sprinting speeds makes you better at making ATP without Oxygen. And therefore, your body becomes very good at making and shuttling lactic acid, as well as buffering it.

When your body is flooded with lactic acid, you know it. It hurts everywhere, and your muscles will lock up. You also start to hyperventilate (remember the buffering of Lactate produces more CO2?) Your muscles will literally stop working in the presence of too much lactate. So when competing, the trick is to run just below what is termed 'lactate threshold', so you are going as fast as you can without producing too much lactic acid, keeping your cool and not stopping. Lactate threshold can be altered with training. Like I said, your body becomes very good at shuttling out and buffering lactate, making it harmless to your muscles. But the only way to get your body to increase lactate threshold is to train just past it, gradually introducing increasing amounts of lactate to the muscles. Then backing off for a few days to allow for the proper adaptations, and then going past it again.

For a race such as a 5K, we are going pretty fast. Our racing speeds are undoubtedly very near our own lactate thresholds, and then we push past the threshold to 'kick in' at the end. After all, the goal is to be as dead as possible when you cross the finish line. So why would I train nowhere near my lactate threshold if that is the racing condition? 'Specificity' is another term used by exercisers to describe the process of matching training conditions to competition conditions. I concentrated primarily on getting my miles in, and so when a race came and I asked my muscles to speed up, they spat out lactic acid so quickly my body was like 'what is that stuff?'. I never introduced lactate to my muscles in training, so they didn't have the ability to efficiently buffer it come race day.

Old skool coaches, the U.S., and even Zach will still swear by mileage. Some athletes put in up to 80 miles a week of running. The only argument I see they have is if it works for them, it works for them. If they are getting faster times, then you can't argue with numbers. However, the Africans, who run shorter distances at much quicker paces, are regularly producing better marathoners than the US. As for me, on May 17, 2007, in my personal blog, I made an entry that said "Current thought: 'why can I run 6 miles, with hills, at an 8:11 pace, and not run 4 miles, less hills, at 7:45?' Agh." That, my friends, is lactate threshold training at it's finest.

So I propose better quality workouts for myself this season. Faster times, at more realistic distances. Working out past lactate threshold is probably one of the more painful experiences one can have in this life, maybe just shy of child birth. But it's only a couple times a week, and it's shorter workouts than what I was doing before.

~chrissy