Improving Endurance

Running is an aerobic sport. Any athlete who has a previous background in aerobic sports like distance swimming, biking, or soccer will have an aerobic base already established more than someone who was inactive. Speed and endurance are two pieces to the distance running puzzle. Some athletes can crush out a super fast mile time but then struggle with longer distance events like the half marathon or full marathon. Today we will be chatting about training specifically to gain endurance and carry your speed across a longer distance

Speed and endurance are the two puzzle pieces 🧩 in running. It’s common for runners to be able to run a half mile or a mile at a fast pace, but they can’t sustain any sort of speed over longer distances from the 5k-marathon.❓So how do you translate your natural speed/fitness to longer distances❓

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💥Speed is RELATIVE. If you can run a 10 min/mile but you can’t make it through three miles without stopping, then you have speed that needs to be translated into endurance with proper training! Just because it’s not a 5 min/mile doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from these training principles💥

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❓WHAT DETERMINES YOUR CURRENT FITNESS LEVEL❓

✅HISTORY: Growing up playing sports like soccer and basketball will ALL contribute to your fitness level as an adult. Your body doesn’t forget the aerobic fitness you have built up over the years and it will affect your “starting point” as a runner

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✅CONSISTENCY OVER THE YEARS: How consistent have you been over those years? Did you run track and cross country in high school but then didn’t run over the summer or winter? These little things matter!

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✅GENETICS: Slow twitch dominant athletes won’t have as much trouble sustaining paces for long periods of time in comparison to fast twitch dominant athletes (a lot of people are an even mixture of both)

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❓HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE YOUR BASELINE SPEED INTO ENDURANCE❓

✅FOCUS ON LONG RUNS: The long run builds endurance through the growth of mitochondria and teaching your body to burn fat efficiently. This is CRUCIAL for endurance events

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✅FOCUS ON TEMPO RUNS: Threshold, marathon, & half marathon tempo runs are KEY to improving your endurance as well. These types of runs improve your lactate threshold to help you run faster for longer and help you practice race paces too

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✅CONSISTENCY: The great thing about endurance training (5k-ultramarathon) is that you can continually improve with consistency unlike training for a .5-1 mile, where you will hit your genetic limit pretty quickly. There are genetic limits for endurance events too, but most people don’t come close to it because they don’t remain consistent over the years