Training Archives - Mojo for Running

MFR 134: How to Optimize Performance with Periodization

Mojo for Running Podcast Most runners run because they know it keeps them fit and because it’s a great hobby. For some, it’s mainly the camaraderie. Others are attracted by the endorphin rush, but virtually all runners also want to get faster.

Is that you? Even if you only do the occasional race, you may want to keep improving, set a new PR at least once in a while.

Then there are also the hard core runners that mainly enjoy the competitive aspect.

Whichever group you fall into, you will benefit from some basic knowledge of periodization, the concept of training cycles that facilitate your fitness. Unfortunately, unless you’ve worked with a coach, and most runners have not, then you probably haven’t even heard of it.

Well, no worries. In this podcast and the next, I explain the concept of macro and micro cycles that comprise periodization. Knowing this concept will improve your running, even if you don’t go all in to apply it fully. Once you listen, you’ll see what I mean.

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MFR 133: From Brutal to Boston

By Debbie Voiles

Mojo for Running Podcast 133

The topic of Episode #132 was dreadful runs. This is a followup that, I hope, will always help you put those runs in perspective. But more than that, it shows you what can happen later in your running career. No matter where you are, now, in your running journey. You can still set lofty running goals and achieve them, but you may need to make some changes.

It’s always the same with running, and maybe this is just as true with other sports, but you continue to evolve as an athlete. You learn more from your body, your experiences, the experiences of your friends, and from running coaches. You become more skilled, your body changes, and you change the way you train and the way you respond to the messages from your body and race performances. That’s a lot, but if you keep an open mind and are willing to continue to try new things, you just may experience a level of success you never thought possible.

This episode is about the contrast between the worst run of my life and the best run of my life, separated by just three weeks. I hope it inspires you.

Three weeks from today, I’ll be running the Boston Marathon for the second time. The first time I was offered a charity bib, which I, of course, enthusiastically accepted, but every step of that 26.2 miles, I was envious of all the runners who had qualified, and I pledged to continue to work on my marathon until I, too, qualified. Well, it took a while, but at age 65, last summer, I did qualify, when I had the best marathon of my life.

I hope you’ll tune in for my videos and posts from Boston three weeks from today. In the meantime, you may enjoy this post about the time, a year ago, when I took about 35 members of my club to Boston to do the Run to Remember Half Marathon. It was a blast, something worth doing for any runner. That race is not on the Boston race course, but while we were in town, we went out to the one-mile point of the Boston course and ran it in and took photos at the finish line. Pics and comments here.

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MFR 132: Explaining Dreadful Runs

By Debbie Voiles

Mojo for Running Podcast

If you have never had a bad run, then you haven’t been running long.

Truth.

Every runner of every level has bad runs now and then. Now if you have them often, that is, of course, a problem, but as a rule, if you haven’t had a lousy run in a while, I’d say you might even want to accept that you’re overdue. Not that you should dwell on that. You shouldn’t dwell on bad runs, ever, for any reason, and you certainly shouldn’t worry if you haven’t had one in a while. What would that accomplish? Instead, celebrate your good fortune.

No, my point is just that you must accept that the occasional bad run is both inevitable and unavoidable.

This episode is focused, not on preventing bad runs, but rather on what might cause them and, most importantly, what not to consider.

Often runners, especially newer runners, reach for the easy answers, easy solutions, but more often, the easy answer, or what seems to be the easy solution, isn’t, but if the runner assumes that, it can actually lead to more bad runs because the problem is not corrected. In fact, jumping to the wrong conclusion may just exacerbate the cause.

Absolutely, do evaluate the terrible run, search for the cause, but don’t spend a lot of time on it. Let it go. Letting it upset you for days, or even for the rest of that day, will accomplish nothing.

In this episode I help you look at the possible causes, and I try to steer you away from jumping to the all-too-attractive conclusion.

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MFR 130: Running Through the Holidays

By Debbie Voiles

episode 130 of the Mojo for Running Podcast

Of the 52 weeks in every year, most runners find the ones between Thanksgiving and New Year’s to be the most challenging from a running perspective. There are just too many things competing for your precious time. I get that. In this episode, I help you with putting it in perspective and managing to do enough to be able to bonce back to normal in January.

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MFR 128: Electrolytes

By Debbie Voiles

Mojo for Running Podcast

Have you ever had a dreadful race but were unable to put your finger on the cause? Of course, there could be many causes, but one of the first places to look is at your electrolyte replacement regimen. What? You don’t have an electrolyte plan? Well, that’s okay if you’re not running farther than 90 minutes, but if you are, then electrolytes may be an area where you can make strides toward a better race experience.

There are many options from deciding whether you’ll use capsules or dissolve a powder to deciding which combination of ingredients will be best for you to whether quantity and frequency.

Here are several articles that will be helpful:

Trail Runner Magazine, What You Need to Know About Electrolytes

Electrolyte Replenishment: Why It’s So Important and How to Do It Right

Fluid and Electrolyte Imbalance

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Answer to Question, MFR Episode 127

By Debbie Voiles

Here is the answer to the multiple choice question I posed in Episode 127 of the podcast, Running Fundamentals:

You may not like this, but the right answer depends. It depends on several factors; so, whatever you decided was the right answer may, in fact, be correct.

And it makes sense that there is more than one right answer because, like I always stress in the podcast, we are not all alike. Differing levels of fitness, natural abilities, age, weight, lifestyles, and family and work commitments, all come into play.

Let’s look at each option.

A. “Do the scheduled 3 miles.” I don’t think you can go wrong with this answer. If you miss one 5-mile run out of a whole training cycle, you’re actually doing great, but, if you’ve missed other runs – or expect to – then this is definitely not a good choice.

B. “Do 4 or 5 miles, today, to add at least partially make up for tomorrow.”

This is a great choice. It won’t overtax you, and it will keep your total weekly mileage up; however, this would be the wrong choice if you’re already feeling tired and were looking forward to doing just 3 today. In that case, ‘A’ is a better choice. On the other hand, if you feel fine, I’d say do it, for sure.

C. “Do 8 miles today to add all today’s miles to today’s to make up for tomorrow.”

This is only the right choice if you are a very experienced runner and have done back to back long runs in the past with no problem, AND you’re feeling completely recovered from yesterday’s 9 miles. So, for most people this isn’t a good choice, but say, for someone who been averaging high mileage for many years, then this won’t be difficult. On the other hand, if that describes you, then you also can certainly get by with the day off or with the planned 3 miles, too. Again, for the great majority of runners, this would be the wrong answer.

D. “Do 8 miles, today, and make it a tempo run, increasing the intensity because you’ll be off tomorrow.”

This is also the wrong answer unless you are training at a high enough level that the 9 you did yesterday represented little effort. As a general rule, though, doing a tempo run the day after your long run would be a bad choice. This question assumes that 9 is a long-ish run ‘for you,’ in which case D would be the wrong answer.

E. “Add a mile or so to all the rest of your runs this week in order to get in your total miles, even though you can’t run tomorrow.”

This is a good choice for most people. An extra day of unplanned rest will likely make it completely reasonable for you to add a mile to several of your other runs, but don’t feel like you have to make up for every mile. Maybe add an extra mile to three runs; that might be ideal.

If you’re feeling the least bit tired, anyway, then definitely just look at the added rest day as a day for your body to renew and refresh, and let it go. Often, runners get a bit too caught up in sticking to a schedule, but other runners are far too random in their training, resulting in going into races unprepared, leading to poor performance, a bad attitude about their running, at least, but more often leading to injury.

Bottom line, you need to follow a good schedule and then make good decisions based on sound knowledge along the way.

MFR 127: Training Fundamentals

By Debbie Voiles

Mojo for Running Podcast Have you ever been in the predicament of not knowing how to compensate for a day when you ended up missing the training on your schedule?

Have you ever planned our own training schedule but wondered if the way you were doing it was optimal? Whether a new runner or a runner with years of experience, it’s altogether possible that you may never have heard of several key training principles for runners that might just make a major difference in your training and running performance. While I’ve covered these topics in previous episodes, it has been a while; so, I felt like it would be a good idea to revisit them.

At the beginning of this episode, I posed a multiple choice question, and I promised to provide the answer on this website.

Click here to read the answer.

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MFR 121: Three Key changes to Help You Run Faster

By Debbie Voiles

Most runners want to get faster. Not everyone can afford to hire a coach, and not everyone has time to train for a marathon, but most runners hope to set new PR’s on a regular basis. This is absolutely possible, but you need to know how to direct your time. Most people have full-time jobs. You probably do, or you’re a full-time parent. Your time is limited; so, you need to know the best most efficient way to spend your running training time.

In this episode, I explain three things that virtually every runner at every level can do to run faster.

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MFR 119: Five Pillars of Intelligent Running

By Debbie Voiles

Five Pillars of Intelligent Running We all think of ourselves as intelligent runners, of course, but even the most experienced, veteran runners sometimes lose sight of the wise and effective path to their goals. Why does this happen? I think because we get caught up in the here and now, the ‘today,’ instead of keeping our eyes on the long term goal, not just our long term running goals but sometimes even our life goals. Yes, running can sometimes distract us from our most far-reaching life goals. That’s bad, but on the flip side, running can make us into the person we need to be to achieve those goals, right?

After all, at the most basic level, we want running to keep us alive and healthy, but beyond that, we set running goals for the purpose of making us into stronger people, finding out what we are, who we are, how much we can handle and overcome.

With this episode, I want to take you back to square one to evaluate whether you’re doing the most basic things to facilitate your trip toward both your short term goals and your most distant goals. I break it down into just five pillars. There is a big difference between an intelligent runner, training with wisdom, and just focusing on the next five miles.

Don’t get me wrong, to some extent, that’s just what you need to do, focus on this run, absolutely, but I just mean that it’s a mistake to become so focused on those next miles that we forget where we want those miles to carry us, the reward we’re working toward.

I hope this podcast will facilitate your running journey and that that will help you reach the destination of your life journey.

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Day 9 of Beginner Runner Class: Turtle Power – BRV 044

By Debbie Voiles

Become a Runner, Day 9, Turtle Power

I’ve been hearing the phrase, ‘turtle power,’ for years, always from ‘slower’ runners, usually in an upbeat, positive way, an “I’m fine with that” way, but sometimes they utter the words apologetically, and that makes me sad.

Often, these are beginner runners, but not always. It is my hope that after listening to this podcast, no one listening will ever feel bad, in any way, about being a slower runner. What is slow, anyway? It’s all relative, isn’t it? When an Olympian runs a 6 minute mile, it’s an off day. Most runners will never see the faster side of 9 minutes, and some will always run 12 minute miles, and I sure hope those people don’t apologize for that because there is no reason to be the least bit apologetic. To me, that’s like apologizing because you have brown hair.

If anyone ever makes you feel like your pace is too slow, then that person is just being unkind and isn’t worth worrying about. You have as much right to go your own pace and be happy with it as any other runner has a right to go the pace that is comfortable to them.

After all, running is an individual sport. One of the most enjoyable elements of running is that anyone can do it; you don’t need to be a gifted athlete, but I sure hope you do realize that anyone at any pace is an athlete.

Turtle Power is the mantra of slower runners everywhere, and so it should be. I hope it’s empowering. If you’re a slower runner, and since you’re a beginner, you probably are, own it; don’t apologize for it. Turtle runners unite!

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