Quick Guide 12: Experiment

"I hate this, I'm bad at it and it isn't doing me any good." In an ideal world, what you do best, what you enjoy most and what you do most often would be the same thing. Sometimes, however, the workout you don't like doing is the one you need most.

When I started running, more than one coach pointed out that I had unusually tight hamstrings. No big deal: there's a strong correlation between fast finishing times in races and tightness of hamstrings. I could still touch my toes (actually put palms on the floor) because I had unusual flexibility in my back. There were all these things that were suggested I do, but I'd been just fine without them up to this point and it seemed like busy work when I'd probably do better just resting.

There are dozens of things that can limit running performance. When you hit one, that decides what you can do. So it seems logical to focus on the most limiting factor and to ignore the rest. What didn't occur to me is that these limiters interact with each other. Tight hamstrings slowed me less than 1%, but compensating for them led to piriformis problems and IT band problems and they slowed me a bit more. Compensating for these led to knee and hip issues which slowed me even more. Then I slipped on some ice when running at top speed and I tore a hamstring, because I hadn't dealt with the underlying issue - and tight hamstrings were simply another result of poor form (due to some inborn structural problems). All those weird exercises had a point.

So, when you look at the workouts I suggest and you think "I don't see how doing sprints will help me when I'm training for a 1/2-marathon," I get that; I thought that too. There's a way to find out whether there's a point or not and that's to experiment.

On average, red blood cells live 18 weeks, so that's the scale you need to think in. Try the "little bit of everything" approach for 6 weeks. Then, if you want to make a change, give that six weeks. Then go back to the original plan, because improvement (or lack thereof) could be caused by other factors - in Minnesota at least, the weather changes dramatically in 6 weeks. If you did better with the change and then worse without it, go back to the changed plan and make that your new base for any other experiments.

There are two basic ways to make changes to plans; you can either increase the volume of one workout or you can do one workout twice per week while removing one you don't like.

Some people are super-responders to some stimulus and they improve most by increasing a workout. Increasing the long run by 50% can tell you if you're destined to be better at longer races. Increasing a fast continuous run by 50% changes it from a "threshold run" to a "tempo run," which is the bread-and-butter of some runners, but which cause others to need a week to recover. Increasing the number of intervals run by 50% usually also requires changing some other factor (slower time or longer rest), making these "extensive interval workouts" which work extremely well for some runners; Jim Ryun famously ran workouts like 50x400 meters at mile pace, but these kill others. I once ran 25x400m in 72 with 75 second rests, but I struggled for days afterward.

The other method, of doing a workout twice as often, is appealing to most runners, because you think you're cutting dead weight and being efficient. And it usually works for a while. Just remember that, when it stops working so well - and that always happens eventually - you can go try going back to the "little bit of everything" plan.