RUNNING THEORY - THE BASICS

Training consists of stressing a particular physiological system 
followed by rest to allow it to re-build itself stronger than before.  Both 
the stressing and the rest are important.  Often we forget the rest part 
when we first start running, or are keen to do well in some race.  You 
must also not just stress everything!  You must stress the particular 
factor that is important to the sport you are training for.  This is called 
exercise or training specificity.

Running well requires four major components to be trained.  These are 
VO2max, Anaerobic Threshold, Aerobic Endurance, and Efficiency.  
There of course many other factors but the above four cover 80% of 
running related performance.  I will briefly describe what each factor 
means and then cover the types of training that stress that aspect of 
running performance.

VO2max
This represents the maximum amount of oxygen per kilogram of 
weight that a person can use in converting fuel to energy.  As there is a 
direct correspondence between oxygen usage and energy consumed it 
represents the practical upper limit of energy available to an exercising 
muscle.  This upper limit is largely genetically determined but training 
can increase it by up to 20% of non-trained capacity.  To train this 
upper limit you will need to performing near it.  This means running 
quite fast.  Interval sessions with 'on' times up to a maximum of 5-8 
minutes are the best mechanism for this.  If you run near your upper 
limit for some time then your body will make adaptions and try and 
increase it.   Running longer than about 8 minutes, you won't be 
running hard enough (close to your VO2max performance) so you 
won't stress this system.

Anaerobic Threshold (AT)
This is the point when the oxygen a muscle requires is not completely 
provided by the air that you breath.  At this point your muscles switch 
from purely aerobic (with oxygen) to anaerobic (without oxygen) 
operation.  Lactic acid starts to build up, you go into oxygen debt and if 
not corrected you stop producing energy and you stop running !  Pain is 
also usually involved.  This switch over point is normally expressed as 
a percentage of your VO2max.  The aim is to increase the percentage 
at which we start operating anaerobically.  It can vary from about 50-
60% of VO2max for untrained people to 90% of VO2max for elite 
athletes.  This is the speed that most long distance racing is done at.  
We try and juggle a race so as to go fast enough not to create too much 
lactic build up so we stop.  Training this system involves running right 
at this cross-over point, or at about 15k race pace.  The training run is 
called an AT run, threshold run, tempo run or time trial and involves 
race pace running for between 20 and 40 minutes.  Of course there 
should be a warmup before and a cool down after.

Aerobic Endurance
This has got to do with how well we utilise the fuel that we are 
provided with for running.  Without going into too much detail there 
are two main sources of fuel.  The most efficient is glycogen (sugar) 
and the longest lasting is fat.  We try and teach our bodies to conserve 
as much glycogen as possible whilst becoming more efficient at using 
fat for fuel.  Running fast uses almost exclusively glycogen as fuel 
whilst running longer than an hour must utilise some fat.  Hitting the 
wall in a marathon usually occurs when our glycogen stores are 
depleted.  In extreme cases, as our brains use glycogen for fuel, we can 
collapse, act delirious etc.  It pays to become better at using fat and 
learning how to conserve glycogen as much as possible.  This factor is 
trained by running for long periods of time (greater than an hour).  The 
body says 'gee I'm running out of glycogen and I don't like this I had 
better do two things- get better at using it and store some more of it.'  
There is an optimum speed to stress this system and it can be worked 
out,  but the basic thing is to run for a long time, it doesn't matter how 
slow you go.

Efficiency
This has got to do with how many other muscles you are trying to 
provide energy to with the air that you breath.  The more wasteful you 
are in terms of extra muscle activity, movement etc the less oxygen is 
available for moving you forward faster.  All of you muscle activity 
should be focused on moving forward, not side to side, up and down, or 
keeping upper body tense etc etc.   If you look at a world class runners 
head you will find it doesn't bob.  Next time you are out on a training 
run look at your shadow on a wall !  Some other pointers are:- Keep 
the height of your feet above the ground only enough to move them 
forward.  Don't have exaggerated rear kicks.  Have the optimum stride 
length and frequency.  Relax your upper body.  Use you hands and 
arms to a purpose, don't just swing them wildly.  Don't bounce from 
side to side like a boxer.  There best way to improve this is to bring it 
into your conscious.  Start thinking about your running posture then 
focus on correcting one thing at a time.  Keep at it.  Bad habits are 
hard to break.  When you are correcting a habit make sure you run with 
the new habit in all runs until it becomes ingrained.  Practice doesn't 
make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.

