You train for 5 months for the big day. You've done 23 long runs, worn out the inside lane on your local track, spent a small fortune on massage and new shoes. You are the fittest that you have ever been. The gun fires and you feel great. You are on personal best pace for 18 miles. Then something starts to go wrong. You feel progressively more sluggish. By 22 miles, you've slowed down to the old familiar death trot. Guess you need to train harder next time....

Please answer the following question: When you take a break from training, your body starts to turn to mush: a) after a few months; b) after a few weeks; c) after a few days; or d) almost immediately. Most runners apparently believe the correct answer is (d), and that the fitness gains of years of running are in danger of quickly vanishing into thin air. This behavior is manifested in phenomena such as running streaks, double workouts, and a propensity to run through such pot

Overtraining is a danger for any motivated distance runner. In striving to improve your performance, you progressively increase the volume and intensity of your training. When races go well, the positive reinforcement spurs you to train harder. When races go poorly, you figure you aren’t fit enough, and train even harder. At some point, you hit your individual training threshold. This is the amount of training stress above which you start to break down.

Summer is here, along with the twin menaces of heat and humidity. Running in the heat can quickly lead to dehydration, which ranks up there with dobermans among runners' worst enemies. Dehydration hurts your performance, and slows your ability to recover for the next workout. Continuing to run when dehydrated can lead to heat stroke and death.

Several forms of cross training can help you maintain or improve your cardiovascular fitness while avoiding injury. Other types of cross training can enhance your running performance too, by improving your muscle balance and running technique. Long distance running develops muscular endurance in specific leg and hip muscles and is wonderful for your cardiovascular system, but tends to make some muscles strong and tight while others remain weak. “Proximal stability” training,

As I rode the exercise bike in the lab this morning, it occurred to me that there are 3 good reasons to cross train:

You have just completed six repetitions of 800 meters at your goal 5 km race pace and are feeling pleasantly exhausted. Next, should you: A) jog once around the track, get in the car and drive home; B) head straight to the nearest bar for a well-earned beer; or C) do a thorough cool-down?

The running mentality lends itself to extremes. But the motto “Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess,” ultimately leads to disaster. To fulfill your potential as a runner, you either need a seasoned coach who can prescribe and monitor your training, or to learn to design your own well-balanced training programs.

Running shoes are wonderful things. They protect your feet from nails and broken glass, allow you to run on concrete, and are particularly useful in ice and snow. While protecting your feet, however, running shoes also treat them like planks that only bend a bit at the ball of the foot.

In last month’s column, we discussed the hard-easy principle, and that sometimes the best plan is to train hard two days in a row followed by two or more recovery days. Two specific situations in which back-to-back hard days can be effective are during weeks when you are racing, or when you are so busy during the Monday to Friday work week that you must get in most of your high quality training during the weekend. Or, you may have a race on Saturday, but still need to get in

Training at high altitudes has been popular among runners since the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. From the results of those Games it was obvious that to compete well at high altitude it is necessary to train at high altitude. It is not clear, however, whether training at altitude provides an advantage for competitions at sea level. The few well-controlled studies have found mixed results when athletes train at altitude to prepare for sea level races. Yet, places such as Bould

Age is less kind to some of us than others. High school reunions often dramatically illustrate this point. Among runners, declines in performance plague some runners in their early thirties, while others (notably Carlos Lopes who won the 1984 Olympic Marathon at age 37, and then ran 2:07:12 at age 38) remain at their best much longer.

After months of toil, you’ve accomplished your marathon goal, and are blissfully content. After a few days, however, the initial euphoria wears off, and post-partum depression sinks in. You ask yourself the terrible question, “what now?” Last month, we looked at ways to improve your recovery after running a marathon. This month, we look at the next stage, how to re-motivate yourself and safely resume training after the marathon. Specifically, which types of workouts to do, wh