With the world in the midst of a pandemic, we are faced with significant challenges to our physical and mental health.
For many athletes, races haven been postponed or cancelled and this can affect motivation levels.
Our training can become directionless without a solid goal to aim towards.
How can we keep ourselves safe in the short-term, but also use this time as an opportunity to come out stronger and better than before?
For runners, now is the PERFECT time to switch from a performance/racing mindset to a health focus and find that sweet spot in our training.
Specifically targeted towards runners, this blog will explore 3 main areas:
WHY running will boost immune your function and keep you safe during a viral outbreak
WHAT to focus on to take your running to the next level
HOW to identify weak links and build long term resilience
1. Exercise to Boost the Immune System
It is widely agreed that regular exercise (30-60 mins daily at moderate intensity) is beneficial for immunity.
Several studies suggest that regular moderate physical activity is associated with decreased mortality and incidence rates for influenza and pneumonia (see graph below).
In their review paper, Nieman and Wentz (2019) found that moderate exercise is an immune system enhancer, that improves defense activity and metabolic health.
But the risk of illness is increased in athletes during periods of intensified training and competition, suggesting prolonged high intense exercise may be counter-productive at this time.
We don’t know exactly how exercise helps, but some theories include:
physical activity may help flush bacteria out of the lungs and airways. This may reduce your chance of getting a cold, flu, or other illness.
exercise causes change in antibodies and white blood cells (WBC). WBCs are the body's immune system cells that fight disease. These antibodies or WBCs circulate more rapidly, so they could detect illnesses earlier than they might have before.
the brief rise in body temperature during and right after exercise may prevent bacteria from growing. This temperature rise may help the body fight infection better, similar to what happens when you have a fever.
exercise slows down the release of stress hormones which may protect against illness.
Exercise may protect against deadly complication in COVID-19
A review released in April 2020 by Zhen Yan, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, showed that medical research findings "strongly support" the possibility that exercise can prevent or at least reduce the severity of acute respiratory distress syndrome, which affects between 3% and 17% of all patients with COVID-19.
The researchers have been looking at an antioxidant known as, "Extracellular superoxide dismutase" (EcSOD), which seemed to improve viral clearance by hunting down harmful free radicals and enabling patients to endure prolonged infection.
This latest study shows EcSOD production is enhanced by moderate intensity exercise.
During exercise, the skeletal muscles (our largest organ in the body) produce EcSOD, secreting it into the circulation to allow binding to other vital organs.
Specifically, slow twitch endurance type muscles have a higher capacity for antioxidant production, compared with fast-twitch, glycolytic fibers with lower oxidative potential.
Accumulating evidence supports that reduced EcSOD abundance and activities in tissues are associated with many disease conditions, and increased EcSOD activity is protective against oxidative stress and damage under these disease pathologies. Endurance exercise increases EcSOD abundance in skeletal tissue, which can be redistributed to peripheral tissues via the circulation to combat ROS and oxidative damage. - picture credit
So…how do you exactly define ‘moderate’ intensity exercise?
One of the easiest and most reliable ways to measure exercise intensity is to use Rate Of Perceived Exertion (RPE) which uses a self-reported scale between 1 (easiest) and 10 (most intense).
The graph below shows how RPE relates to exercise:
Thus, a moderate intensity would be described as below 5/10 RPE, which exercise physiologists describe as the aerobic zone.
Moderate intensity exercise should allow you to carry on a conversation without huffing and puffing too much.
2. What to focus on to take your running to the next level
Here is where the current advice to limit your training intensity to moderate can assist your immune system, but also can help your running long term.
We know one of the best predictors of success is to string consistent weeks of training in a row and the best way to do this is to keep your running intensity low while slowly building weekly volume.
Some recent research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research has suggested that world-class long-distance running performances are best predicted by volume of easy runs (and deliberate practice of short-interval and tempo runs).
This novel study shows that there is a crucial role for easy runs that contribute to greater volumes of running, allowing for improved cardio-vascular efficiency (building a better engine) and optimal physiological functioning.
“All time best running coach” - Arthur Lydiard
In the 1960s, New Zealand athletes took the Olympics by storm. They won medals from 800 meters to the marathon and what was interesting was that the winners were all from the same town - with the same coach!
That coach was New Zealander Arthur Lydiard (1917-2004) who was credited with developing one of the first periodised training programs for runners.
Lydiard strongly advised building this low-intensity aerobic base over a period of at least 3 months, (or 4-5 months if you’re starting out) and then building your race specific work later (see Figure below).
Lydiard, intuitively understandstood the physiology of what makes a resilient runner and urged his runners to hold themselves back in base training.
“To race well, you must train slowly” - Arthur Lydiard
“You can never go too slowly to develop cardiac efficiency” - Arthur Lydiard
“Train, don’t strain” - Arthur Lydiard
“It’s not the best athlete who wins, but the best prepared.” - Arthur Lydiard
“Never do anaerobic work in conditioning. Never. Ever. That’s one of the first things: You don’t do it. Don’t even try. Don’t even run fast to the finish. That’s the one thing you’ve got to learn” - Arthur Lydiard
Physiology of base training
There are two basic energy systems you use when training: anaerobic and aerobic.
Aerobic means “with oxygen” and in base training, one of the primary goals is to improve your ability to take in and utilize oxygen.
Unfortunately, you can't build both your aerobic and anaerobic systems at the same time very well.
Lydiard believed the cardiovascular system had to be built up to it’s maximum first, if you wanted to develop the muscular system to its maximum.
Container analogy
A simple analogy is to imagine a container.
Insider the container is your fitness level.
All of your hard workouts are enclosed inside the container.
They get you fit, but are ultimately limited by the container’s size / volume.
Rather than focusing on fitness, base training focuses on making the container bigger.
This is achieved through conditioning of the cardio-vascular system and building mito-chondria in the cells of the muscles.
This paves the way for harder race specific fitness training later in the training phase.
GOAT - Eluid Kipchoge
How does the greatest runner of all time, Eluid Kipchoge distribute his training loads?
As you can see below, Stephen Seiler has complied his data leading up to the Berlin Marathon - and you can see the majority of his training time is spent in the ‘easy’ zone.
No doubt a pretty reliable template for great performances.
Kipchoge's training over 41 days and 59 sessions prior to #berlinmarathon: rough quantification of available training log.
Limitations of high intensity running
High intensity running sessions need 48-72 hours to recover from. So in that time, you can normally do some short runs, but nothing more substantial, as you will normally be too sore.
To get faster and more resilient, it can feel natural to want to train HARDER and HARDER, but done too often, this can lead to an increased risk of injury and more time off for recovery.
And sadly can lead to burnout and giving up the sport altogether.
Sign you might be spending too much time doing hard training:
pain / niggling injuries
excessive tightness
low energy
poor sleep
irritable
Essentially the body will adapt faster if you're doing lower intensity efforts more frequently.
Benefits of building low-intensity running volume base first
Adaptations of aerobic training include:
increased stroke volume of the heart, capillary density and mitochondrial density.
stroke volume increase simply means that your heart pumps more blood per beat.
mitochondria are structures within muscle cells that produce energy from fat and carbohydrate oxidation. Think of them as tiny batteries for muscle contractions.
improved running technique and efficiency - every stride is practice and improving your neuro-muscular efficiency
improves muscle strength and endurance
increases blood flow and circulation, leading to healthier tissues and aiding recovery
improves mind - body connection (can become aware of weak links early in the training cycle and strengthen them with a specific plan)
helps burn fat and maintain appropriate weight
Tips for building base mileage
focus on total weekly mileage, rather than getting the most out of every run
pace should be relaxed and easy - it should pass the ‘talk test’
keep your cadence relatively high, while maintaining a gentle pace (takes some practice)
insert walking breaks whenever you feel like you need it
keep your feet fresh by rotating between 2-3 of running shoes
get onto the trails where you can take some pressure off your joints and enjoy being out in nature
increase long run every second week to allow adequate recovery time
every fourth week should be a de-loading/recovery week so drop total volume down by 20-30% to allow for healing and recovery
“let fitness come to you, don’t chase fitness”
Aerobic base building ISN’T just slow, easy running
Lydiard suggests during base training ideally you should be running large amounts of mileage at varying speeds, effort, and terrains.
The main thing to avoid is pushing into the anaerobic zone for prolonged periods, when you’re muscles get filled with lactic acid and you are sore the following day.
This would include avoiding extended workouts at V02 Max (roughly 5K pace) or faster, such as 400m to 2km repeats.
These anaerobic workouts raise the acidity of cells, which can damage the mitochondria and aerobic enzymes you’re working to build.
Types of sessions you can still do:
VERY EASY RUN: at conversational pace, throwing in some walking breaks whenever you feel like it
PROGRESSION RUN: Easy jog for first half and then increasing the pace for second half, but remaining below anaerobic threshold (e.g. 10k - half marathon pace)
HILL SPRINTS: Find a medium steep hill and do 10 sec up hill sprints at 80-90% max, followed by 1 min walking recovery. Repeat x 5-10. These will build leg strength but won’t over-tax the muscles.
STRIDES: At the end of an easy run - 5 x 200m sprints at 80-90% maximum. Think of increasing leg turn-over speed. These will will improve neuro-muscular efficiency.
MONA-FARTLEK: Run the on’s at moderate intensity tempo pace approx 10k pace and walk the off sections for recovery. (This would differ from a regular in season mona fartlek that would be run at a much higher intensity with running recoveries).
LONG WALK IN THE HILLS: easy meander at a casual pace
STRENGTH SESSIONS: Base training is the perfect time to work on building up your weak links (see below).
Investing in your running body
Another analogy I like to use around building a base foundation is around money.
Simply put - hard intense running is like spending money - it costs you physically and is very taxing on your body.
If you are ONLY spending money every day, one day you will get a very rude awakening (bank knocking on the door), as you hit your credit card debt limits. Pain all around!
Whereas as easy aerobic running is like saving money.
Each time you work within your limits you are building your savings (better endurance capacity).
You can then reap the investment dividends about 6-12 months later. Race day comes around and you have a great day spending the money you built up and never go into debt.
Building Your Optimal Running Volume
Coach Arthur Lydiard would recommend his elite athletes build up to 160-200km+ per week during base aerobic foundation training.
“The bigger the foundation, the bigger and higher the house can be built.” - Lydiard
For your specific goals and level of training, please see the table below for a general number to aim towards. Obviously building up very gradually and listening to your body is the key.
These numbers may sounds a lot.
But remember this is low-intensity and may even include walking if you are just starting out.
To put it in perspective, the World Health Organisation recommends 30-60 mins aerobic exercise per day. If you were to do 45 mins per day of walk/run at a very easy pace that would be around 7km per day.
Done 6 days per week adds up to 40km per week and would be very manageable.
If that sounds like too much, you might need to reconsider your running goals in the short-term any focus on building your daily walking volume. There is nothing wrong with that - even some of the elite athletes need to use a walking program when returning from an injury.
To figure out what pace you should be doing your easy runs, we have designed an online calculatorthat can help you.
You can enter your most recent 3km or 5km time and see the pace range you should be aiming at for your easy runs.
It also gives you an accurate idea of your training zones for specific goals which is super handy.
Knowing and respecting your individual ‘easy’ zone pace is probably the single most important factor for a runner to learn.
Now, if you have just discovered your ‘easy pace’ to be ridiculously slow, then you know you are probably a ‘threshold addict’.
Full disclosure, I am a recovering threshold addict.
It took an intervention and a whole lot of pain for my dull brain to understand the physiology behind staying injury free as a runner.
If you are struggling to reconcile your ‘easy’ running pace, then here is a simple hack:
Your easy running pace is the average pace for your whole run.
So you can still run fairly quickly, but you will need to take some walking breaks.
Are you really a runner if you take walking breaks?
I’m not sure exactly why this belief developed that you’re not really a runner if you take walking breaks.
I would say the major limitation to building volume is refusing to ever take walking breaks.
It’s a belief that is worth letting go of, if you want to transform your running.
Repetitive eccentric loading of muscles and tendons from running is hugely stressful for the body.
Let’s face it - building a resilient runners body takes time and patience.
To put this in context, can you imagine going to a gym and smashing out 10,000 loaded single leg squats in a row without a break? That is the torture you are putting your body through, if you refuse to take walking breaks, especially early on in your running career.
Nutrition
The base phase of training is an ideal time to set up your nutrition plan and I would highly recommend consulting with a sports nutritionist for an individual plan, based on your goals.
The most effective nutritional strategies for athletes include increased intake of protein, carbohydrates and polyphenols.
A consistent finding is that carbohydrate intake during prolonged exercise, whether from drinks or sugar-dense fruits such as bananas or gels is associated with reduced stress hormones, diminished blood levels of neutrophils and monocytes, and reduced levels of inflammation.
Exercise physiologist, David Nieman believes that carbohydrates are the key nutrient bonding exercise and good health and he recommends ingesting them before, during and after running.
Indeed, he notes a whole new science of immuno-metabolism that places glucose and glycogen at the center of healthy immunity as well as being the key to strong endurance athletes.
When runners consume carbs during their long runs, their immune cells “look and perform much better,” says Nieman.
3. How to use this time to build resilience - Discovering your weak links
I’ve long considered running to be one of the best barometers of musculo-skeletal capacity.
No other test can give more information about our body than finding out what happens after 20km of running (a distance which our innate ancestral bodies used to cover frequently).
As physical therapist and strength coach Gray Cook recommends, “First move well, then move often.”
Most of us have some weak links in our body that we may never know until we start to increase demand.
As you’re progressing in training, the harder sessions will ‘test’ your physical capacity and movement foundation.
The benefit of building your low-intensity volume in the initial few months of training is that it can expose weak links in your body, without risking huge strain on your body.
Because there is no pressure to be fast and progress too quickly, in this phase you can take your time to properly address the underlying issue.
Identifying your weak links can sometimes be really easy - it’s the area of your body that is overloaded and painful.
But there is often also a deeper root cause of why a certain tissue is getting overloaded, sometimes not as obvious.
That is where a good Physio can help you do some detective work and identify the more subtle issues that may be contributing.
These issues may be things like:
weak or inefficient core muscles
inactive glutes
stiff ankles from past injury
tight hip flexors
poor body awareness
Free Running Screening
I’ve put together a free screening tool to help runners identify any weak links.
This is a completely free service and my goal is to help as many runners as possible, so please feel free to share with your running friends!
This involves a short set of questions and then 5 physical capacity tests.
As you can probably tell, I’m super passionate about helping runners stay injury free in these challenging times the world is facing.
Having a strong physical foundation is the key to keeping yourself strong and healthy so we can be of support to others.
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