FIND YOUR TOP GEAR
How learning to run at different paces – or change your running gears – can dramatically improve your times
WORDS: TINA CHANTREY
Running at the same easy/steady pace during every training run is not going to help you improve as a runner. For any athlete, novice through to professional, it’s the variety of your training that will ensure leg strength develops, cardiovascular fitness increases and your core, or trunk, becomes more skilled at guiding you successfully to reach your goal.
“To become more efficient, your body needs to be worked aerobically and anaerobically,” advises Matthew Fleet, senior lecturer in physical education at Southampton Solent University (solent.ac.uk). “We need to learn to change running gears, or the pace we run at, to achieve this,” he says.
WORKING HARDER
Put into more simple terms, when you are running aerobically, you’re able to breathe relatively easily and talk freely; your body can supply enough oxygen to the working muscles to meet demand. Working anaerobically, however, means you are working at a higher intensity and your body is not able to consume enough oxygen to meet the required demand.