| Can Running Slower Make You Race Faster? |
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By Mike Sandrock
Scripps Howard News Service BOULDER, Colorado -- Can running slower help you race faster? The answer is yes, although it's a concept runners often find hard to grasp. I was reminded of this recently when talking with Australian Lee Troop, winner of the Longmont (Colorado) Sunrise Stampede, who is in town training with Andrew Letherby for the Commonwealth Games marathon later this month. Troop said the Australian and New Zealand training tradition emphasizes slower base-building running, creating a foundation that allows a runner to handle speed work when peaking for a race. That idea comes from New Zealand coaching legend Arthur Lydiard, the man who mentored, among many, University of Colorado head coach Mark Wetmore and Boulder's Lorraine Moller, the 1992 Olympic marathon bronze medallist and is now a successful coach herself. "Aerobic (with oxygen) conditioning is primary," Moller said. That is exactly what Jorge Torres, Dathan Ritzenhein and the rest of the CU cross country runners are doing right now as they begin preparing to defend their NCAA team title. The Buffs will not be doing any speed work, or anaerobic (without oxygen) running, until roughly six weeks before the NCAA championships in November. According to Moller, many people make the mistake of doing too much speed work instead of focusing on endurance training. Peter Snell, perhaps the greatest New Zealand runner ever, agrees with Moller. Snell won the 800 meters in both the 1960 and 1964 Olympics, and was twice world record holder in the mile and also in the 1,000 meters. The key to Snell's success, he said when I interviewed him a few years ago for a book, was the 22-mile run he did over rolling hills every week outside of Auckland. Snell, now a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas medical school, said in a recent Runner's World on-line interview that he finds it surprising that runners are not turning in times faster than he clocked nearly 40 years ago, despite scholarships and better equipment and facilities. "It may have been that I had wonderful talent, but I don't think so," Snell said. "I think I had talent, but I did the right training." That "right training" is anathema for most runners because it consists mainly of many, many miles of base training, instead of going down to the track and running fast intervals as often as possible. Snell said, "Most physiologists are trained on the idea of specificity, and simply can't understand that slow training makes you faster." It does so, Snell went on to explain, in the following way: "When you run at a moderate pace, your slow twitch muscle fibers are the first ones recruited. But if you run far enough, they become glycogen depleted and can no longer contract, so eventually the fast twitch fibers are recruited." The problem with the dearth of medals turned in by U.S. runners at major championships since Frank Shorter was in his prime is not a lack of speed, Snell said. Rather, "They're running out of gas. Everyone else cruises past them because they've got superior endurance." (Contact Mike Sandrock of the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado., at www.dailycamera.com.)
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