Muscular endurance treadmill workout

I love running on the treadmill and I love cycling on my indoor bike trainer.
Perhaps my love of indoor "stationary" workouts comes from following a black line for 25 yards in for 23+ years as a competitive swimmer.

I enjoy being able to control my workout when I train indoors and to minimize all outside influences like terrain, traffic, wind and cold/hot weather.
But I also love training outside as this is the best environment for me to mentally and physically prepare for my upcoming races.

It's easy to make excuses when it comes to weather and available time to train (morning and night) so for me, I always seek the best environment for a quality workout. Sometimes it is indoors and sometimes it is outdoors.
At time in the year, most of my workouts are indoors - but as soon as it gets warmer, it's hard for me to stay indoors to train. I love the sun and the heat!  

Karel, on the other hand, will make every attempt to train outside, as much as possible. 

For my run workout this morning, the focus was endurance but there was also a heavy strength component. 

My key runs often include a very specific main set whereas my optional and/or EZ runs are form focused and pace and miles are not a priority.

If you are one to despise the treadmill, I challenge you to my run workout as I hope that you love the structure as much as I did as you feel yourself staying focused on each segment and determined to finish all three rounds.

I strongly advise having a pre-workout carb snack before this workout (I had some oatmeal with raisins, cinnamon and honey), at least 1 bottle water (and a gel or energy chews/blocks in case you need a pick-me up in the last round) and a post workout snack/meal with protein and carbs as soon as you can to start the rebuilding. 

I suggest to pace yourself and to go by RPE. This is an endurance focused run so you shouldn't be taxing the heart too much. Your muscles are designed to get tired but not at the expense of your heart working excessively hard.
Keep the effort steady and strong. 

With every segment of the main set, you will have the opportunity to get the HR up a little by increasing the speed and when you run at an incline, this should make you feel powerful. When you finish an incline run and return to 1% grade, this should feel like a slight recovery.

Imagine yourself running up and down hills with a little hard effort before and after each climb. 

Try to keep the same speed throughout the entire round, but adjust if your form starts to suffer. You are better off adjusting your pace, than calling it a day, if you find you were over-ambitious with your intensity at the start of this workout. 

Happy running!
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5 min Dynamic warm-up

15 min jog warm-up (very EZ, light on the feet)
10 min power walk at 15% incline, fast walk (ex. 3.5 mph)

MS 3x's:
3 min at 1% incline (last 30 sec strong)
3 min at 4% incline (last 30 sec strong)
3 min at 1% incline (last 30 sec strong)
3 min at 4% incline (last 30 sec strong)
3 min at 1% incline (last 30 sec strong)
30-60 sec break (straddle treadmill and lower HR as much as possible)
Repeat 2 more rounds

Walk to cool down

(if you are not comfortable performing this all running, you could also use this as a walking workout).

Modification if you are short on time:
5 min Dynamic warm-up
5 min jog warm-up
10 min power walk (this will wake-up your glutes)
2 rounds of the main set instead of three - still keep with the same focus and intensity. 

Speedy interval run - feeling strong

This morning we had a great workout at the Caine Halter YMCA. I felt strong, healthy and super fast as I was running with Karel....well more like running with Karel's strong and fast body in my view on the treadmill in front of me.
It's total motivation to watch my hubby train!

Our workout included around 25-30 minutes of dynamic warm-ups, followed by strength training followed by plyometrics and then our interval treadmill run workout. We can easily spend 20-40 minutes before a workout to warm-up and do proper strength training for neuromuscular firing. 

MS:

3 x 5 min desc 1-3 to strong w/ 4 min EZ in between (jog/rest)

3 x 3.5 min desc 1-3 (starting from last strong effort from previous set) w/ 3 min EZ in between (jog/rest)

4 x 2 min best effort (starting from best effort of previous set and holding same effort) w/ 2 min rest in between (straddle treadmill)

Total for me:

10.1 miles, 77 minutes

After our workout, we headed to our favorite French Bakery  to get a loaf of fresh bread (we only buy/eat local fresh bread). I stayed in the car as Karel headed inside and I should have guessed that Karel would buy more than just a loaf of bread.

Sometimes Karel gets a serious case of croissantitis. It is so serious that if he does not get a croissant after his workout, he tells me he will suffer all day. :)

It's not breaking news but Karel loves his carbs!

I'm incredibly grateful to see where my body is at right now in the season. I am approaching two years of being 100% injury free. Karel has not been seriously injured since he started training for triathlons back in 2012. However, Karel did develop a little navicular tendonitis and bone spur on the top of his foot after training a few months in Newton run shoes so he will not wear those ever again. Now he wears Brooks. 

Many times, we don't know why injuries happen and they just come out of the blue. But for most athletes, there is a red flag somewhere in life/training to identify and that weakness can be focused on so that the same mistake does not happen twice. Typical red flags: The athlete may be increasing intensity too quickly, trying to develop too quickly (or skipping necessary steps), putting too much volume on the body than the body can handle (the body is not strong enough to adapt to training stress), not eating enough to support training, not getting good sleep, poor form/biomechanics, the daily diet does not properly nourish the body, the sport nutrition regime does not support the periodized training load/intensity and volume.

With almost 6 consecutive years of experiencing very painful hip/glute/lower back muscular-related issues which kept me from running for 1-3 months at a time (every single year!), I contribute my recent and current good health and strong body (over the past 2 years) to a few very important factors. Although I have been able to accomplish a lot in the past 9 years of endurance racing, there are a few things that I'd like to highlight, which I will discuss in my next blog post.

2 time-crunched workouts

Everything in moderation. You have probably heard this saying a lot when it comes to the diet but what about when applied to an athlete's workout regime?

Well, I don't want to be a moderate athlete. I want to be the best athlete I can be.

Because my season is focused on endurance racing, I know that there is a specific training regime that I need to follow and accomplish to be mentally and physically prepared for my races.

However, just because I have training plan for the week, this doesn't mean that it can never change. Understanding that life brings changes, stressful moments and days when free-time to train is extremely limited. 

I never sacrifice my diet, sleep or work to train. Work pays the bills and my diet and sleep contribute to performance gains. I have learned through making many mistakes in my endurance training and racing lifestyle over the past 9 years that the quality of workouts matter more than the quality.

Additionally, I constantly remind my athletes that what you do (or don't do) between your workouts (when they do occur) is how we get stronger, faster and more powerful as athletes. Just because you can check off a workout, it doesn't mean that it will bring performance gains if you are sacrificing other things in life that will assist in physical performance gains. 

This past week has been quite busy for us and the planned training routine was modified almost every day. For me and Karel, one week of training never matches the next week of training, even if we accomplish every workout in our training plan.

On Thursday evening, it was nearing 6:30pm and I had a key bike and EZ run on my schedule. Although we rode in the morning with our athlete Justine for almost 2 hours, that ride was all about  her. We would have been just fine not working out in the evening but we both felt like we needed our own personal workout. Karel did a 6 mile run (starting from my mom's house because we needed to help her with something from 4-6pm) and I got on the trainer.

My main set on the trainer was 25 minutes and my main set for the run was 4 minutes. Here's the workout:

(disclaimer, although I share my workouts please keep in mind that they specific to where I am in my periodized training plan. It is important to focus on your development as an athlete and build a strong foundation and powerful body prior to doing any speed work). 

Thursday PM workout:

Trainer Bike: 

10 min mobility/hip/glute work

20 min warm-up (Z1-Z2, increasing cadence and effort every 5 minutes)

MS 5x's:

3 minutes heavy gear at Z3 power

2 minutes high cadence, Z3 power

Repeat

10 min cool down

Brick Run: 

2 min run to the other side of my neighborhood

8 x 30 sec hill sprints w/ 90 sec walk/jog in between (down the hill)

2 min run back home

On Saturday morning, we needed to be in the car to head to Asheville for a meeting at 9:20am (meeting at 11am, 1:20 drive to Asheville) so without sacrificing sleep or fueling before the workout, we planned to head to the Y at 7am. Things would have been different in terms of our run and available time to train if it wasn't raining outside so the treadmill run was better than no run and thus, we made a quality workout out of it.

Karel did his own workout and I did as follows:

Saturday AM workout: 

10 min hip/glute/mobility work (I will never skip this before a run even if that means running 10-15 minutes less)

Warm-up: 

20 min EZ run with 1 min rest at 9 and 19 minutes. 

MS: 20 x 90 sec hill runs at 4% incline with 30 sec rest (straddle treadmill) in between. 

#1-10 @ 7.5 mph (steady)

#11-15 @ 7.8 mph (strong, felt the burn the last 30 sec)

#16-19 @ 8 mph (strong, felt the burn the last 60 sec)

#20 @ best effort, 8.6 mph (felt the burn at 15 sec)

3 min cool down

Total: 1:05, 7.75 miles

The wonderful part of focusing on quality workouts  and making the most out of your available time is knowing that you are still moving closer to your fitness goals but you are not skipping the valuable steps in your development. Plus, if you use your time wisely, you will recover faster, perform better and still enjoy the awesome things in life that will make you smile on race day.

Like Campy exploring the Asheville woods. 

A few take-aways for the time-crunched athlete:
-There are going to be times when you feel so rushed to get it all done. Never sacrifice sleep or healthy eating and proper fueling at the expense of getting in a longer workout  or more workouts.
-Make sure you have a few key workouts during the week dedicated to your development. It's great to workout  with friends but your workouts need to be focused on you and your progression in order for you to apply those workouts to your race day.
-Never underestimate the power of a shorter workout. I challenge anyone to tell me that a 5K all out effort is easier than a 10-mile steady long run. In order to focus on quality workouts you need to get your mind focused and stop telling yourself that more is always better. 

-Your fitness development is based on consistent workouts and frequent workouts. Use this advice to have a global perspective on your training. If you are able to only work out 3 times during the week, make sure they are quality workouts and don't overdo it on the weekends to make up for time-lost during the week. If you can get in 5 x 30 min workouts during the week that is much better than 1-2 ok workouts during the week and 1-2 epic workouts on the weekend.
-A haphazard training plan where you are just checking off workouts to get them done, just going through the motions with an underfueled, exhausted body, following someone else's training or using fear based training to make you feel more prepared for race day, comes with great risks and consequences. Be smart with your available time to train.