Beginning Runners Training Guide

Welcome to our Beginning Runners Training Guide. You have decided to start running to lose weight, increase endurance, relieve stress, or because you think it?s a sport you would like to start up. Whatever your reason for running, congratulations on getting started.

Since I am so glad you have decided to learn about running at Extreme Fitness Now, I want to make sure you have the motivation and desire to stick with your new routine.

Variety is the Spice of Life.

Isn?t this the truth? When it comes to running, you better make sure you have variety to keep things interesting. Most people who start a running program go through the same workout day in and day out. Running becomes a bore, then sooner or later it becomes a past time.

Running routines should consist of a variety of different approaches, which include traditional endure training but also speed and strength training.

Not only will variety keep running interesting, it will improve your overall performance. This is because your body learns to respond and act in different ways.

The Beginning Runners Training Guide will help you improve running form, learn about pacing, and learn to deal with running discomfort.

The building blocks of a basic running program are:

• Hill Training for strength
  
• Fartlek Training for speed and pacing
• Interval Training for speed
• Easy Runs for recovery
• Tempo training for speed and pace
• Long Runs for endurance

I know what you are thinking, ?this seems like a lot and a bit over whelming?. You do not have to include each of these workouts into your running schedule, but the addition of one or two of these workouts into your schedule a week will greatly improve your overall performance.

Each of these workouts is designed to work on a certain part of your running game. If you would like to run faster, incorporate some speed workouts, if you would like to run for longer distances work on endurance.

I will note that it takes about 2 weeks to start seeing improvements in speed and endurance. So be patient and stick with it.

Getting Started With Your Running Routine

This is a Beginning Runners Training Guide, so if you have never run before, or are coming back after a long break, hold off on speed work at the moment. You will want to build up your endurance, running anywhere from 15-20 miles a weeks before you start introducing speed workouts. Doing so beforehand can cause injury, as extra strain is put on your muscles.

Always start and finish specialized sessions with an easy run. As I have said, these training sessions add stress to your muscles and we do not want a pulled muscle impeding your progress.

Learn your pace. As you go through these workouts remember that an easy pace is something like jogging, not walking or stopping. If this happens, then you are going at a pace to fast for yourself. Hard training requires you to push a little harder than you normally would, but you should not be in pain or collapsing at the end. You should be able to continue running at a modest pace afterwards.

That my friends, is how we learn about pacing in running in the Beginning Runners Training Guide.

Last but not least, make sure to rest! Your body needs to recover after hard workout, so performing an easy run or taking a day off here and there allows your muscles to get back in to the game.

Speed Training Basics

Fartlek Training

Fartlek is Swedish for ?speed play?. Fartlek incorporates a variety of paces at different intervals into one training session.

You should start at an easy pace, and then insert some intervals of speed running. These intervals can vary anywhere from 15-30 seconds to 1-2 minutes. These hard pace intervals are usually followed by a recovery interval at an easy pace.

When you start, try to use landmarks to note when and where to start and stop your different intervals. You should keep an even pace for your hard intervals, so pick a distance that allows to you run hard throughout. You do not want to slow down towards the end.

Your Fartlek can be as hard or easy as you want with many long hard pace intervals and short east intervals, or long recovery intervals with short hard intervals. A 20-30 minute session should do wonders.

Interval Training

Intervals are usually practiced on a 400m track (about a quarter of a mile). If you have a local track near you that?s great, if not find a park of something close by to practice intervals on.

Unlike Fartlek training, distances and pace are fixed for these workouts. Interval training requires you to run hard at short distances, anywhere from 400-1200m, followed by a short recovery. These short distances allow you to work harder than you would on a longer run.

Depending on your training requirements you can run short intervals of 200m or long intervals of 800m. Try to run them in cycles of 4 before taking a rest. So 4x400m is 4 laps followed by a easy lap around the track.

Tempo Running

Tempo running is the easiest of the speed training workouts. Basically, all you do is run faster than you normal running pace for a given distance. This will teach your body to run fast for long periods of time. Overtime, you will push the upper limits of your running pace as your body adapts.

Your Tempo does not have to be constant for run to run. You should base it on how your body feels that day. Just make sure you can run at that tempo for the entire run after you warm up.

These are the basics of a good running schedule. A mixture of long runs, recovery runs, speed training, and hill training. Slowly start incorporating these training concepts into your schedule and you will be running like a pro. Make sure to leave a day or two for rest.

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