Tag: warm-up

Training Tip: Upgrade Your Warmup with Dynamic Stretching
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My hamstrings have been awfully cranky lately. Am I sitting too much? Am I now officially decrepit? I’m familiar with the hamstring stiffness that comes from sitting at a desk all day, but usually it works itself out after 20 minutes or so of warmup jogging and I can do my workout with no issues. Lately, with the cold weather and wind, even a 40-minute super-easy warmup jog isn’t cutting it. My hamstrings bitch at me as I attempt to launch into 800m intervals on the track: their combined age is 82 years old, they’ll have me know, and they demand more respect!

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Run Your Running Drills
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If you’ve been at this running thing for a while, you might be wondering what you can do to take your training up a notch other than adding ever more miles. You already do speed workouts and tempos. You do your core. You sleep and eat mostly well. What else is there?

Drills. 

Drills are a great addition to warm-ups before a track workout. They’re also great to work in some agility exercises to the end of runs. They can help your running form, your range of motion, and running economy. What’s not to love?

I like to incorporate them into the run itself, so that I’m actually running my running drills. I usually do this in the off-season, when I’m not doing “real” workouts, or when I’m easing back from an off-period and want to prepare my body to return to hard running. Let me persuade you to give this training tip a try.

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Training 101: Strides
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Strides are relaxed and controlled bursts of speed ranging anywhere from 60 meters to 200 meters, or 20-35 seconds. They can be used in variety of ways to enhance your training. The goal of a stride is to maintain good running form, while accelerating into a hard effort (85% – 95% of max). Strides are NOT a race and you should not be straining to complete them; instead, you should focus on running fast while relaxed. 

Many runners don’t think to incorporate strides into their training, but strides are a great way to introduce faster speed workouts. Plus, distance running can be monotonous and can leave you feeling stale after long periods of training. Incorporating strides will stress your body in a new way and will strengthen your fast-twitch muscle fibers without breaking you down. 

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What the Heck Are Strides?
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imageIt took me years of consistent training before I made a big breakthrough with running and broke into the sub-elite ranks of the sport. Sure, I ran a lot of miles, I did long runs and tempos and intervals, but I chalk a lot of my success up to something you might not suspect. My favorite secret to getting faster? Strides!

If you’ve perused our training logs you’ve seen that many of us incorporate strides. Strides, sometimes called striders, are a common component of high school and college training programs and they should be in your training program too. But what exactly are strides?

While there certainly are a few of us who have no idea, many of us have at least a passing knowledge of what strides are. But even if you have included them in your training for years, do you actually know what purpose they serve in your training? Do you know when it’s ideal to incorporate them into a run? Are you doing them correctly? Let’s discuss! Read more >>

Should You Warm-up for a Marathon?
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Joanna Thompson in a black racing outfit warms up before the 2016 olympic trials marathon
Joanna Thompson warming-up before the 2016 Olympic Trials Marathon.

You read our race reports and some of us talk about warming up before our marathons. You read our Olympic Trials coverage and saw pictures of the participants doing their pre-race shake-outs. We talk about warming-up for a marathon like like it’s normal, like everyone at the starting line at a marathon is out there warming up, but warming-up for a marathon is not for everyone. But that doesn’t mean it’s not for you.

You might be thinking, “Dude, I’m about to run 26.2 miles. Why would I run extra miles first? Wouldn’t I waste a mile and set myself up to bonk? And even if I wanted to warm up, how would I do that crammed into a starting corral?”

But you might be surprised and after reading this, you might see that you also need to warm-up before starting your next marathon. Read more >>

The Warm-Up: Not Just for Race Day
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Hint, hint

I once saw a post on Facebook that said something like, “The first 3 miles of my run were the best….said no one, ever.”  How many times have you spent those early miles waiting for a tight muscle to ease up or gritting it out until you finally hit your groove and stop feeling so flat?

We’ve discussed warm-ups here before: last spring, our esteemed leader, Salty, wrote an informative post about the race day warm-up with some excellent tips for the race or hard work-out situation.  Going a step further, I think a warm-up can be helpful if included before any run you do.  A good warm-up can get rid of the kinks while pumping up your heart-rate so when you set off on your run you’re feeling loose, light on your feet and ready to go, right from the beginning.  

Hey, the elites do it (see this video series detailing Meb Keflezighi’s pre-run routine) – why shouldn’t we?   Read more >>

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Race Warm-Ups
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This guy knows it’s time to bust out the track suits. We’re talking warm-ups today. (Photo credit: lilfatdog)

Ever have a sucky race? Of course, we all have. Maybe afterwards you analyzed your log to see if something didn’t go right in training. Maybe you pinpointed something you ate or didn’t eat as the culprit. Maybe you chalked it up to Evil P. Maybe you shrugged your shoulders and concluded you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

What if it was none of those things? Did you ever consider that maybe it was your warm-up that did you in?

That’s right. An improper warm-up will DOOM you to a crappy race! 

To help us all avoid the pain of enduring a crappy race due to an improper warm-up, let’s investigate why we need warm-ups and what we can do to ensure we do them properly.

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