Whatdoes it take to become a good athlete in long-duration sports, such as running or cycling or swimming? This is a question that is quite complicated to answer, because making the list of things that are said in these cases such as genetics, training, VO2Ma, strength, recovery capacity, etc., is reductive, or maybe even superfluous, because a one-size-fits-all answer that can fit all athletes well is not there. Or perhaps, in fact, something that can be identified as the most important parameter and that all long-distance runners should aim for is there, and it is the
endurance
.
LEARN TO RESIST
No, we are obviously not talking about civil disobedience or disobedience in general, far from it. The endurance we are talking about is that ability of our body to carry on an effort as long as possible with the greatest possible intensity. The most trivial example, in the case of a long-distance runner, is that of the Marathoner who runs the full forty-two thousand one hundred and ninety-five meters trying to hit his best time. To do so, of course, he must have been fed properly and trained in the best possible conditions. For one and the other, it is best to consult a specialist, but for the latter point it is possible to go and identify some common aspects of many training plans, valid for both beginners and more advanced athletes.
THE TRAINING PYRAMID
We need to imagine the workouts required for long-distance running as a pyramid structured in such a way as to have:
Easy runs
– These are the everyday runs, the ones where you don’t exert too much effort and should make up to 80% of all training volume. They’re the easiest ones to do because hey, if you’re running and you think you’re not struggling, well, then it’s an easy run!
Easy long-distance runs
– These are the races where most of all we go to build the aerobic base useful for making the body think in terms of conserving energy, activating the mechanisms necessary for the correct energy distribution over time and the correct district of our body. These runs should be given about 15 percent weight in the management of the training plan. Although they are to be done at an easy pace, in most cases they will not be that easy, as fatigue will come from the distance covered and not just the intensity of the effort.
Difficult runs
– Such as repeats, for example, or race pace runs for considerable distances, such as the Half Marathon in cases where one is preparing for a Marathon. For these, the space in a training plan should include few such runs and all of them inserted in a way that succeeds in making the athlete’s body recover. These runs allow the body to go and put stress on a whole series of cellular structures such as the mitochondria-which are sort of energy powerhouses of the cell-which react by increasing in number and intensifying their activity, but more importantly they have a remarkable effect on the cardiovascular system. The blood vessels, in fact, in an effort to increase the incoming blood to the muscles, create new capillaries and thicken the walls of the larger conduits, allowing more blood to flow, while the heart, for its part, is in the situation of necessity whereby it must grow and develop more wall thickness so that it can pump blood with more force and speed throughout the body.
The adaptations that our body will gain from the combination of the different types of training will go to form a base not only to be preserved, but to continue to keep constant over time while trying not to change too much the percentages seen. The risk, in fact, would be to let one side prevail over the other and lose the benefits that come from proper planning. It could be said that it is a training program that of the pyramids also takes the outlook of duration, and not only the form!
(Main image credits: Kasto on DepositPhotos.com)