Anerobics Part 3
By
Woody Green
of
RUNNERS NICHE
There can be no doubt that you could run a fairly good marathon and
never do a lick of anaerobic training. By doing long, aerobic training a
runner's body to evolves into a better aerobic animal. The muscles
change physically and chemically to produce more energy aerobically.
More tiny blood vessels are produced to get the oxygen and nutrients to
the working muscle cells. The body learns to make better use of fat as a
fuel, which helps to keep you from "hitting the wall" in the last few
miles. Your VO2 Max, or the amount of oxygen your body can take in
through the lungs, increases from aerobic training as well.
In a marathon, almost all of the needed energy is produced through the
aerobic energy pathways. Why would there be any need to do anaerobic
training to run a marathon? Why suffer through those hard interval
workouts?
Marathon training is like baking a cake. The cake itself is made with
the aerobic runs. This is the very core of what you need to do a
marathon - good old, grind it out, keep going for three plus hours and
make it to the finish line carrot cake. The cake tastes pretty good by
itself, but something is missing. You really want that frosting!
In this case, the frosting is what you get from anaerobic training. Even
though you don't use the anaerobic energy system much in a marathon, you
really want it when you need it.
Frank Shorter is certain that the reason he won the 1972 Olympic
marathon was his dedication to interval training. When he made his break
at about 8 miles, he surged hard and moved away. This is where he used
he used his anaerobic training. Frank ran under 4:40 for the ninth mile,
and nobody could stay with him. He feels that nobody in the race could
handle the faster pace because they didn't do the kind of interval
training he did. Once he got his lead, he backed off the pace and
probably made little use of anaerobic energy for the remainder of the
race. His anaerobic training likely netted him the Olympic gold.
Using the credit card analogy, you could say that most of the
marathoners in the '72 Olympics had a low credit limit Visa, while Frank
had the Gold card! (Sorry, bad pun...)
Okay, if you want to win a marathon, it makes sense to do some anaerobic
training, to get the frosting on your cake. But, why bother if you are a
"common" runner just trying to finish the doggone thing? There are many
reasons.
First, something you should understand about anaerobic training is that
by its very nature it is strength training. Most people think of lifting
weights when we talk about strength training. When lifting, we give the
muscle a heavy load and ask it to work hard for a short period of time.
The same thing happens when we do interval training. We are running fast
over a relatively short period of time, and we are asking the muscles to
generate much greater force than when we take an easy distance run.
Strong leg muscles will help to protect a runner from injuries. It helps
running efficiency and form, as well. Strength alone would be a good
reason to do a few intervals in preparation for your next marathon.
There is more good news, though. Intervals help teach your body to take
in more oxygen, that is to raise your VO2 Max. Long runs do this, too,
but interval training can help raise the VO2 max even higher when used
in conjunction with long distance training. This is another reason the
frosting on our training cake tastes so good.
Anaerobic training will also help you to overcome some stumbling blocks
along the way. Did you get to the first mile marker and discover you
went out to fast? You will want to ease back to the correct pace right
away, of course, but at least your interval training will provide some
damage control. What about heartbreak hill? A stronger runner who can
produce anaerobic energy efficiently can handle hills better than those
who have done no interval training.
All of this is not to say that a marathon runner needs to do a great
deal of hard anaerobic training. The basis of all marathon training has
to be long runs. You can't have a cake with just frosting!
