TRAINING TIPS: Time to Try the Track

At the end of a workout I was doing on the 1896 Olympic games track in Athens (when I was growing up my family lived in an apartment across the street from the famous stadium), a German track fan who had been keeping track of my splits approached me.

“Who are you?” he asked with an amazed look on his face. “Do you realize you just broke the world record for 800 metres six times?”

Unfortunately nothing could have been further from the truth. As best as I could figure, the long straights and tight corners of the 1896 track added up to about 300m, which meant each two-lap interval I was running was 600m, not 800m. That put me about a articleal code away from being able to compete with the world’s best half-milers, let alone beat them.

Short track or not, I got over to the stadium once or twice a week whenever I was home in Athens, to work on my speed, turnover and sense of pace in a controlled environment. No matter what level of runner you are, you could also likely benefit from spending some time on the track for all the same reasons.

Considered the purest form of running by many avid track and field specialists, running on a track provides the ultimate in reality checks. There’s no hiding from your times because the track never lies – the distances are exact and, generally, the conditions remain fairly constant. In these days of counting strides, keeping track of heart rates and memorizing pace times, being able to gauge your own pace by feel can help you in both training and racing.

Most beginning runners only have one speed – easy running. As you move on from the “going to finish the next race” phase to the “going to finish the next race in X minutes” phase, incorporating some sort of speed workouts into your weekly routine becomes critical. Doing that speed on a track is a great way to make sure you’re getting the most out of your time.

Don’t think that you need to be extremely experienced to hit the track. Anyone can and should feel at home even on the busiest of indoor tracks. Make sure you follow the outlined track etiquette and no one will give you a hard time unless, of course, you pass them.

Etiquette:

1. On an outdoor track, you should always run in a counterclockwise direction. Many indoor facilities will alternate directions each day, so make sure to read the signs carefully before you get started.
2. Always look both ways before you cross the track, just as you would crossing a road. A sprinter wearing spikes won’t do as much damage to you as a car, but they sure could cause a lot of pain if you step in front of them.
3. Look behind you before you start an interval. Make sure that you’re not getting in the way of someone who is running intervals.
4. Stay clear of the infield if there are throwers practicing. There’s a reason we call javelin competitors “spear throwers.”
5. When you’re doing an interval, stay to the inside of the track to allow faster athletes to pass on your right. If you’re in a race, though, and about to be lapped, it’s polite to move out to lane two or three to allow the leaders to stay on the inside.
6. Before a race, be quiet around the start area. Also remember to be aware of other racers during your warmup.

Track Workouts:

Keep track of both your interval times and recovery during each workout and monitor them carefully to ensure you’re improving and to also help you figure out what pace you can handle in your next race.

1. One-lap intervals of an outdoor track (400m) is an old standby workout for track runners of all levels. You’ll never look out of place if you arrive at the track and run between four and 12 of these quarter-mile loops. The pacing is easy to figure out, too. A 90-second 400m interval is at a 3:45-per-kilometre pace (times 2.5), or a six-minute-per-mile pace (times four).
2. Ladder sets are another easy workout to plan and execute. A popular distance runner’s ladder would be: 400m, 800m, 1200m, 1600m. You can add some distance to this workout by making it a pyramid and doing 1200m, 800m, 400m intervals to finish off the set.
3. If you’re trying to enhance your speed, focus on shorter intervals of about 200m.
4. You can vary the recovery for all of these types of workouts to make the workout more challenging or easier. One of my regular sets is four to eight 200m intervals on one minute, which means that you need to start the next interval at the end of each minute. If you’re running 40 seconds per interval (5:20/ mile pace) you only get 20 seconds of rest before you need to start the next set.