At what pace or paces should I train to maximise my fitness and my running performance? If you can answer this question, you have the key to a successful training programme.

There are three ways to improve running performance:

1. you can increase your maximum oxygen uptake, or VO2max, which measures the greatest volume of oxygen that can be dispatched to your muscles during exercise;
2. you can extend the point at which your muscle efficiency falls off significantly (your lactate threshold, or LT);
3. and you can improve your endurance, or running economy (RE).

It follows that the most effective training takes direct aim at one or more of these three factors. Training that isn’t specific will still produce results, but it won’t produce the best, most efficient results. In other words, you can go out and run around town for 30-40 minutes a day, and your condition will definitely improve. There’s no denying that haphazard training works, and a lot of runners aren’t willing to tamper with a method that’s already producing results.

At some point, however, you’re bound to start wondering if there isn’t a better way. It’s not a matter of seeking shortcuts, it’s simply a desire to train smarter.

And that desire leads straight to these three different training paces.

1. Quicker On The Uptake

Your maximum oxygen uptake is the greatest amount of oxygen that your muscles can use while you’re exercising as hard as you can. Note that VO2max is not just the amount of oxygen that your heart and lungs can provide. As you train, your leg muscles become more efficient at burning the available oxygen. This is the specificity of training, which helps explain why a fit swimmer might not run very fast, and a fit runner might not swim very well. Both have great cardiovascular systems, but an athlete has to train the muscles specific to their particular event.

Many famous runners have their VO2max measured in laboratories. You may have seen the results listed in magazines and books, but the figures probably didn’t mean much to you, because the usual unit of measurement is millilitres per kilogram of body weight per minute.

What’s needed is the right pace for training your VO2max. Using the document below, you can locate your own VO2max pace. Research indicates that regular training at this pace will increase your VO2max, until you reach a genetically predetermined maximum. That is, it will make you fitter and faster.

Let’s note a few more things about this VO2max pace.

First, it’s not the same as your all-out sprint speed. It’s a pace that you could hold for an 11-minute race. If you chose to sprint for just 30 seconds, say, you could run at a much faster pace. Faster isn’t better, however. The best pace for improving your VO2max is your VO2max pace.

Running a daily 11-minute race time trial isn’t the answer, either. It would quickly lead to chronic fatigue. Except when racing, don’t try to run continually for more than five minutes at VO2max pace. Nor should you use the document below to pick out some illusory or goal pace. You must train at the pace calculated from your current racing performance. Only after your race performances improve should you drop down to faster training paces.

While training for an upcoming competition, run at VO2max pace about once a week (During off-season or maintenance periods, you don’t need to do VO2max intervals). Try to run this session where you can closely monitor distance and pace. A good work-out would be 3-6 x 800m, or 8-12 x 400m at your VO2max pace. Take a two- to three-minute jog recovery between each repetition.

The idea behind this kind of interval training is that you can safely go up to or beyond your maximum capacity of 11 minutes of VO2max-pace running, because the jogging recoveries give you regular rests. Adaptation without exhaustion is the foundation of all training programmes. Once you’ve become accustomed to the effort of VO2max training, you can take it off the track to the roads or another location of your choice.

We can’t overemphasise the importance of running at your VO2max pace. Far too many runners think interval training means speedwork. No doubt you can and have run 400m intervals faster than your VO2max pace. Well, stop it! If you stand by your former habits, then you’re still following the old hit-or-miss school of training, and you just might miss. Running too fast leads to fatigue and breakdown. Running at your VO2max pace – it’s not slow running, but rather controlled speed – raises your maximum oxygen uptake, which improves performance potential.

Extending Your Threshold

Lactate threshold is one of the more confusing and hotly debated topics in exercise physiology and training. It’s also one of the most important. Scientists always knew that runners with a high VO2max tended to produce the fastest running times. More recent research has elevated lactate threshold to a position of equal importance.

Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion, and Derek Clayton, the first man to break 2:09 in the marathon, provide two of the best examples of the importance of lactate threshold. Each had a relatively low VO2max for elite athletes. However their lactate thresholds were so high that they could run marathons at 85 per cent of their VO2max, while other athletes could only maintain levels of 75-80 per cent.

Lactate threshold is not just important to marathoners. No matter what your distance, the higher your lactate threshold, the faster you can go before your muscles give up.

The way to improve your lactate threshold is to train at your LT pace (see column three of the document below). These LT paces are calculated at 85 per cent of your VO2max, or just a little bit faster than your marathon pace.

Your weekly schedule should include one LT session in which you cover three to six miles at your LT pace. There are any number of ways to do this. For instance, you could go to the track and run repetitions of one and a half to two miles at LT pace. Do two or three of these with a short jogging recovery between efforts.

It’s also easy to do LT training as part of your regular on-road training if you have a measured course. A short road run might consist of a one-mile warm-up, three to four miles at LT pace, and a one-mile cool-down. If you’re training for a marathon, you could do three to four miles of LT running in the middle of a long run.

Real Recovery

Running Economy training is in some ways the most perplexing of the three training paces. RE training doesn’t improve any single factor the way that VO2max pace and LT training do. Rather, it works on all aspects of your running endurance – the cardiovascular, the biomechanical, the biochemical, and the psychological – in a generalised way.

The other two training paces are much more efficient and effective. But you can’t do them every day. In fact, you shouldn’t do either more than once a week. That leaves you guessing about the rest of the week.

You could always decide to do nothing on the other five days, but then your condition wouldn’t improve. It might even deteriorate. You could run hundreds of miles during the other five days, but that isn’t very prudent for most people.

So what you probably end up doing, like almost everyone else, is going out for a lot of easy runs. That’s fine, except for one thing: too many runners, when they head out the door for ‘just an easy run‘, run too fast. As a result, they don’t get the recovery they need after their harder training days.

The secret to easy running is to find the slowest pace that will still provide all the generalised aerobic benefits you want. Here, slower is better – up to a point. If you run too slowly you get almost no training effect, and your work-out time is essentially wasted. So, the big question becomes, how slowly can you run and still be training?

Research indicates that the dividing line is at about 65 per cent of your VO2max (see column four of the document below). If this pace seems ridiculously slow, don’t worry about it. So long as your everyday training pace is truly comfortable and recuperative, you can run at 70-80 per cent of your VO2max without excessive strain. On the other hand, if you often feel tired before training and force yourself to run at an arbitrary (and perhaps too stressful) pace, you might enjoy knowing that you could run a lot slower and still make deposits into you training account. RE pace is also the right pace for your long runs, the purpose of which is to accustom your body, in a generalised way, to spending several hours on the road.

One important effect of RE training that shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated is calorie burning. On days when it’s RE or nothing, RE training will help keep your weight in check. Otherwise, you’re likely to start gaining weight, which will have a negative impact on your running, not to mention your overall health.

Fine-Tuning Your Training

Simplicity is one of the great virtues of this system. But if you want to go beyond the basics, here are few more points to ponder.

• Pace training Many athletes and coaches believe in training at hoped-for racing pace. Particularly if you’re preparing for a race that will take less than 11 minutes, you should add race-pace intervals to your training diet.
• Racing Any race of 5K or more counts as a VO2max run. In most situations you shouldn’t train at VO2max pace during a week in which you race.
• Heart rate If you’re not using a measured course, you can use your heart rate to determine when you’re running at the correct pace. First, calculate your maximum heart rate. When you’re training at VO2max pace, you should peak at your maximum heart rate. When you’re running at LT pace, you should peak at 90 per cent of your max. And for RE training, you should raise your heart rate to 75 per cent. If you don’t have a heart-rate monitor and want to check your heart rate on the run, take your pulse at the end of an interval, for 10 seconds, and multiply by six.
• Cross-training If you’re looking to substitute some cycling or other aerobic exercise for certain runs, the best substitution days are your RE training days. Because of the law of specificity of training, you can’t expect a hard bike ride to have the same beneficial effects as a VO2max pace session.
• Overtraining Any time you experience extreme difficulty completing one of your sessions, plan a rest period. Sometimes a day or two of easy running will suffice; sometimes you will need several weeks. Don’t return to VO2max pace sessions or LT training until your RE runs are feeling comfortable again.

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David Bedford, Frank Shorter, marathon, post templates, Road running, Running, Sports, Steve Prefontaine, VO2 max