Not too fast!

Press, 27 February 1980, Page 21

Not too fast!

RUNNERS’ DIARY

Bv

John Drew

Canterbury’s woman representative in the New Zealand world cross country team, Anne-Marie Keown, offered sound advice to enthusiasts in he annual Y.W.C.A., allwomen's fun run in Hagley Park last Sunday morning.

Speaking to runners ranging in age from 64 to children of five and six, lined up in brilliant sunshine before the start, Anne-Marie told them to train gradually and systematically. “Don't be impatient for results. It really takes quite a long time to gain stamina fitness but it’s well worth it,” she said. And the president of the St Martins Club, Mr Peter Rigg, was there to advise new runners to join a club as one of the ways of learning how to train. You have only to jog in the opposite direction to the main stream of runners hustling round the parks to see many pacing themselves too fast for their capabilities. Many of these puffing park pounders compound their folly by doing it every day. Some make matters, worse for themselves by failing to vary the duration of their runs, thereby falling victim to runners’ rut, a common error among the inexperienced.

You need a certain brand of bravery to persevere with this kind of back-to-back training. If you are one of those courageous souls . who daily train with unrelenting desperation it may pay to reflect that mere valour is not enough — there has to be discretion as well.

Sound simple guides to pace are: (1) train at about 90 sec to 100 sec a mile slower than your “full throttle”-pace for the distance: (2) Run fast only over about 10 per cent of your total training and racing mileage. . It’s easy to fall for too fast a pace while training in the park , when many runners seem to be running faster than you are. A man capable of doing a five-mile Hagley circuit at, say, five-minute-mile pace (and there are plenty of athletes of this calibre training in the park) may steam past you at well below this pace. Try and go with him and you may find you are struggling at a racing pace at which he is training, as he should be, well within himself.

One df the basic principles of training is much the same for top athletes as for beginners of any age. That’s to • mingle shorter, faster runs with a larger number of longer, slower, recovery runs so that the human machinery has a chance to consolidiate and improve in time for the next, harder and more demanding outing. And build pace on top of extensive, long, slow aerobic (non puff) training. Even seasoned athletes can’t remain at- peak performance for more than

six or seven weeks or so. After that they return to slow build-up training. As a beginner you should attempt no fast running close to full capacity until you handle a run of two hours or more. There is a saying attributed to Ortegay Gasset which goes something like: “To be in a hurry you have to be sick or ambitious.”

If you persistently train close to your top pace and distance capability you are likely to defeat your ambitions by going sick or lame or your mind refuses to accept the overload of ordeal and you throw’ the game away. 1 remember Geoff Pyne, a New’ Zealand representative at both cross-country and track, saying that, when a young runner at Marlborough College, he used to go out each day trying to run faster each time.

“The result was that my times got slower and

slower,” said Geoff. “That was — until I got to know better.” The most recent sports medicine symposium I attended was held at Nelson in conjunction with the Wellcome “Doctors 10km” event. Dr Lloyd Drake, medical adviser to John Walker and other sports physicians, held forth almost-all day on injuries, including bone, joint, and soft tissue and back injuries. And appropriately so, since at least six out of 10 of runners of all kinds in New’ Zealand are off the road at some time through injury. "Too much, too soon, coupled with shoes having insufficient road shock absorbency and heel lift are the most common injury causes.

Others include insufficient attention to stretchig of tight, shortened ham strings and calf muscles and ’ heel tendons lack of remedial strengthening exercises to counter muscular imbalance; inattention to uneven shoe wear; inadequate limbering and stretching before training and afterwards. There is blunt wisdom from Dr Jack Scaff, the famous director of the Honolulu Marathon Clinic, which trains hundreds of runners every year. Of those injured Dr Scaff says: "You have to teach them to lay off. We never give injections of anvthing. That’s simply hiding an injury, not curing it. The best medications, he says, are “tincture of time and tincture of patience.” Which is reminiscent of what Anne-Marie Keown told women fun runners in Hagley Park last Sunday.