Most of the popular runners claim miracle training plans, but there is no secret other than continuous and consistent training.
One of the main problems runners suffer is the urgency of wanting to achieve results in the very short term, as a result of the current pace of life and the business need to have to sell and see the fruits of work right now. This way of life in which what commands is immediate, where we have to be available on the mobile 24 hours a day because nobody can wait, it leads us to want to achieve any goal in record time: the trouble is that this is really the only way to fail, at least in the world of ‘running’.
In a society like today’s where results are demanded almost in advance, it may seem like a waste of time to stick to a training routine for weeks, even months, and worse, many people can get their training plan wrong by confusing concepts like the consistency of a long-term workout with a boring routine. While most popular runners claim miracle training plans – set records in 4 weeks! – there is an irrefutable truth: the longer you prepare, the more chance of success you have. If instead of setting a goal for 4 weeks, you do it for two or three training cycles, or even one or two seasons ahead, it will have more possibilities. There are no miracle diets, or training plans that implausibly cut your times to 4 weeks.
The training, perseverance and consistency to maintain a training plan throughout a season is the shortest way to achieve your goals. Shortcuts do not exist or, rather, they do not lead where you want. You need to set long-term goals.
A minimum of two or three cycles (one year or year and a half) is the reasonable time frame to achieve compliance. In fact, it takes a long time for our physiology and neuromuscular pathways to adapt to the effort we want to put ourselves through to achieve our ‘records’. Therefore, repetition and perseverance, maintaining a scheduled training is essential to improve ourselves.
Being among the world’s elite and running with the best requires an athlete to train consistently and continuously, for a minimum of ten thousand hours
In this sense, there is no more to see our professional athletes, who do not arise overnight but are the result of planned routine workouts that they maintain for years and whose results are manifesting little by little, season after season. Being able to be in the world elite and running with the best requires an athlete to train consistently and continuously, for a minimum of ten thousand hours, that is, to practice intensely for at least 3 hours a day for a minimum eight years old. If these are the minimum times required by an elite athlete, what less can be demanded of a popular athlete with less natural conditions?
Among all the conditions that an athlete like any of us must introduce into the shaker to achieve their goals, the most important are to accumulate kilometers and repeat key workouts that, depending on the conditions of the runner and the tests they want to overcome, will consist of long shoots,intervals or series.
These are the four principles that must be present in your training plans for at least one year (two cycles), although, as we said above, the longer you extend this routine, the more chances you will have of achieving your goals. Adapt these principles to your training as the four legs on which to build your success and you will achieve it.
Move
The more you move, the better! Get moving. Increase the training and race days. It depends on what level you start from, increase one more day each month until you reach 5-6 days of training. It is not essential that the 5-6 days do running training,
but I do want to do sports even if it is another sports activity. This exercise will complement your training and help you improve and adapt your physiology to the effort required to exceed your personal marks. It is not necessary to run every day, but be sure to move every day.
Train hard
To improve it is mandatory to push yourself and train hard at least one day a week. That day, speed up your training, either with sets or interval training, perhaps the most effective.
Active rest
It is not to go against the previous principle, but it is necessary to train hard at least once a week, it is almost more important to avoid injuries to reduce the intensity and the mileage the next day, even rest. Our recommendation is that after intense training practice what coaches call active rest, that is, do a very low intensity training or cross training, such as swimming, that allows to maintain our organism while the muscles involved in the overexertion of the previous day rest.
Long runs
In the same way that we recommended you to run more intensely and quickly one day a week, it is important that you lengthen the mileage at least one day out of seven and also use another one on the weekend (when we have more time) to increase your running time in a distance equivalent to at least 150%. That is to say, if you normally train an average of 10 kilometers, on Sunday you should run over a distance of at least 15 kilometers and at paces 30-40 seconds slower than your best target marathon time. If you intend to run at 4’30 ” a kilometer, running at 5’15 ” would be ideal.
