Get the Balance Right
Two top coaches' advice on the stress/rest cycle
By Duncan Larkin
As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine
Regardless of ability, all competitive runners struggle with the same dilemma: How to find the perfect balance between rest and training. Rest too much, take too many zero days and you’re going to blame that the next time your race falls apart or you injure yourself. Train too hard, complete too many exhausting track repeats, log junk mileage just to hit a magic number on a schedule, and you risk the same thing.
Running Times columnist and coach Greg McMillan calls this quest for balance “getting in tune with your stress/rest cycle. Everyone’s stress/rest cycle is different, and it changes from week to week and year to year across your entire running career,” McMillan says. Paradoxically, he points out that, the more experienced the runner, the longer they’ve been running, the worse they usually are at understanding their stress/rest cycle. “Most of us are driven by external factors: the log book and the training plan that we have in front of us. Most of us will say, ‘This is what I’ve always done for 20 years.’”
So what can be done to get more in tune with your stress/rest cycle?
McMillan advises flexibility above all else—not in your muscles, but in your willingness to adjust your schedule. In other words, just because 15 years ago you always went hard on Tuesdays and Thursdays and long on Sundays and raced well on this program, there’s no guarantee the routine will continue to serve you well indefinitely. McMillan notes, “As you age, your stress/rest cycle may be telling you that you need more recovery between those workouts. And that is really hard for most of us, because we want to accomplish things in training. We have a training plan that tells us to achieve certain mileage, but in the end, what you should really care about it your race performance. You have to be open to changing your training—whether it’s volume or frequency of workout—in order to race better.”
Mountain running ace, 2:40 marathoner and coach Nicole Hunt has a similar perspective, especially concerning masters runners. “I have discovered that masters thrive on only two hard running workouts a week, one of which includes a long run,” she says, “and then one to three harder cross training workouts a week. This pattern achieves a perfect balance which produces huge gains in fitness while keeping the master runner energized and injury free.”
Besides alternating your weekly routine, Hunt suggests getting more out of your training runs. “All training runs should include some quality running like strides, hill surges, tempo runs, and intervals. Even just 3-10 minutes of fast running would be beneficial. An example might be 5 x 1 minutes of hills at 3K effort with 1 minute jogging between repetitions.”
Entering into the optimal stress/rest cycle involves other things besides tailoring your running. Both coaches recommend taking a look at what and when you eat. McMillan suggests consuming the right foods (mostly carbs, with a little protein) in the first 30 minutes to two hours after a workout to help restock muscle glycogen stores. Hunt recommends choosing healthy foods that support the immune system, which can become compromised by frequent hard training. She recommends “foods like blackberries mixed with plain yogurt and flaxseeds; foods that contain carbohydrates and protein.”
Taking to heart these tips—adding flexibility to your schedule, listening to your body, and monitoring your nutrition—should help you strike that elusive balance between overstressing your system and resting too much. Optimizing race performance while staying injury free doesn’t necessarily come from an impressive log book, a formula, or what worked in the past; it comes from being open to try something different.
Duncan Larkin is a 2:32 marathoner who lives in West Chester, Penn. His article on training with Ethiopians appeared in our September 2008 issue.