Improve Your Running and Have a Breakout Performance in Your IRONMAN and Half IRONMAN
Running can be an elusive mistress. Far too many times, we’ve heard the following from athletes: “I’m not a good runner,” “I’m always injured,” or “I can’t get any faster.”
This corrosive, weight-bearing activity, which can be so wonderful but so frustrating, can deliver a mountain of problems for many who try to embrace it. In IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 events, the run discipline is the final leg of the race when you have already accumulated fatigue from the preceding swimming and cycling, are going to be dehydrated to some degree, and will have used up much of your fuel. It is, therefore, no surprise that many athletes experience performance frustrations in the run portion of their events.
So, how can you set up an effective strategy for run training and racing to minimize risk and maximize your trained potential on race day?
The sections of this blog are as follows:
Key running challenges in IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3
Optimizing run performance off the bike is a unique challenge that many athletes fail to appreciate in the broader context of an overall triathlon event. An old saying goes, ‘bike for show, but run for dough,’ which highlights that so much of race performance comes down to how well you execute the run leg. However, the saying doesn’t tell the whole story.
The run is the triathlon discipline in which trained potential most commonly fails to align with race day performance. A common error is to believe you need to double down on your run training and do more. Tellingly, running is also the discipline that results in the highest incidence of muscle tissue injury.
Here lies the paradox. So many athletes get pulled into running more (too much volume), while just serving to drive excess fatigue and, frequently, leading to injury. The good news is that this is certainly not a dead-end street.
Here are a few simple facts:
Triathlon is a single sport with three disciplines: Many folks mistakenly view triathlon as three separate sports. An effective training program will break this mindset. Triathlon is a single sport of consecutive disciplines. It is folly to default to ‘add more’ when you struggle on the run portion, and you should always look at overall race performance and trained readiness if you are going to optimize running well off the bike.
Poor performance in the run isn’t just about the run: The run is the last piece of the puzzle but is directly impacted by the execution of the two disciplines prior. Race day performance hinges on adequate fitness in swimming and cycling, good pacing relative to that fitness, and proper fueling to set up the run performance. Your trained potential will only emerge if you commence the race's final leg well hydrated, fueled, and with the appropriate muscular resilience.
Run limitation is often muscular: Mechanical fatigue is the biggest challenge facing most long-distance triathletes. In middle-distance to long-course racing, it is rare to see athletes struggle due to cardiovascular distress. You are much more likely to see grimaces of frustration because the legs simply won’t maintain proper form and speed, despite breathing remaining relatively calm.
Half the battle is arriving healthy: Too high a portion of long-course athletes arrive at races nursing niggles, or off the back of training programs that have been interrupted by musculoskeletal injury. Many of these emerge from running training. Without consistency, your chances of great running performances are severely limited.
So, you have a weight-bearing discipline that delivers significant muscular damage occurring as the final piece of the race. The mission is to build an alternative approach to running that will minimize injury risk but build performance potential off the bike. How should you tackle the challenge and take your run to the next level?
A fresh approach to running training for race day success
Running shouldn’t be painful and disappointing. It can be rewarding and health-positive if we take a measured approach.
Training boils down to applying specific stress to the body from which you positively adapt and get stronger, fitter, and more resilient.
Let’s frame the running essentials:
A Strong Chassis: This refers to good posture, a robust muscular base, and resilient leg tissue.
Cardiovascular Conditioning: Yes, you need to be fit.
Muscular Resilience: This is essential for retaining form and speed during every run off the bike.
At Purple Patch, we adopt a multisport approach to running training to best hone the above components of a well-rounded runner.
Here is a quick list of the methods we employ to ensure our athletes run well off the bike:
Consistency: The mission is to build muscular resilience, while ingraining great form and posture habits. We have athletes adopt a high-frequency running schedule. This might mean running daily or almost daily for many, but without long or higher intensity intervals. This ‘almost daily’ approach includes runs as short as 7-10 minutes and no more than 50 minutes most days of the week.
Embrace the soul-filling: Most of your running can be low-stress and conversational. Have the courage to go really easy, but very frequently. This develops tissue resilience, a patient build to fitness, and excellent motor programming to aid posture and form improvements.
Trail runs: Of course, some long runs are essential to arrive race-ready. But, for those who have access, longer runs should be completed on soft-surface trails, which minimize muscle damage and injury risk.
Make good posture and form a habit: Added to all of the above is a critical Purple Patch saying ‘run as well as you can, as long as you can, as often as you can.’ This highlights the simple fact that slogging around with poor form is perilous. We leverage walk breaks as a tool to reset form and posture, allow an emotional reset, and delay muscular fatigue and damage. It takes bravery, but it results in faster overall times for most amateur athletes who face running challenges.
Lean into multisport: This is a critical one that most folks fail to realize can be a powerful tool for all levels of athletes. You don’t need much hard running to improve as a runner if you embrace multisport.
Cycling: offers a massive dose of non-weight-bearing muscular endurance and fitness stimulus to develop resilience and top-end performance.
Swimming: is helpful in physiological engine development and offers the opportunity to hit higher intensities in training with less injury risk.
We do integrate some running speed, as well as strength-based hill work, but we also heavily lean into the other two disciplines to safely drive overall muscular and cardiovascular conditioning. Using all three sports is a powerful tool to help your running development.
The only true way this approach works is by adhering to the key principles. One of the most common mistakes is to go too hard in the sessions designated to be low stress. If you push too hard on easy runs, fatigue and injury lurk around the corner. Take a long-term view and allow for a patient build of consistency.
This approach tends to be easy for time-starved athletes to integrate into life, as short runs post strength, swim, or bike are accessible. Pre-dinner runs of 10 to 30 minutes are also convenient add-ons. In addition, the low-stress aspect of many of the sessions, which include limitless walk breaks, is simple to manage alongside the broad scope of life stressors most athletes face.
On top of embracing this approach to run training, we at Purple Patch insist on a year-round strength regime. The baseline of performance across most sports is proper posture. We can then add prescriptions to improve coordination, mobility, speed, and power.
An effective strength and conditioning program is:
Consistent: Year-round adherence.
Progressive: The program should promote continuous strength gains.
Comprehensive: Strength, speed, and coordination should all be covered.
Specific: It should not dilute the effectiveness of your endurance training. The aim is to integrate the program, not just add it as an afterthought.
We offer a year-round strength program specifically designed for endurance athletes. It uses a video-on-demand platform that integrates into any endurance training program. You don’t need to be a Purple Patch athlete to benefit from our strength program. Whether you’re self-coached or defer to a mentor for your endurance sessions, feel free to add on the Purple Patch strength program as a terrific supplement.
Race day run strategies
Adopting a measured and patient approach to running will improve your consistency and decrease your chances of injury. However, I should point out that this approach tends to sneak fitness up quietly. Many athletes don’t realize how much running time they’ve put into each block of work, as so much of the volume is lower stress and built around frequency.
There are fewer big, daunting sessions that facilitate confidence and satisfaction, but also bring fatigue and injury risk. I always joke that readiness with the Purple Patch approach sneaks up behind you and whacks you on the back of the head.
I encourage you to chase feeling and enjoyment rather than faster splits throughout your running journey. If you are building high consistency, avoiding injury, and improving your relationship with running, things are going great. Those who are successfully embracing the routine often report their enjoyment of sessions improving, and those who previously felt daunted by running training typically experience a reduction in anxiety.
But what about race day? Putting it into action. There are a few considerations that will allow your newly trained potential to shine on race day:
Nail Your Pacing: The truth is that most athletes are under-fit for the swim portion of a triathlon, creating high physiological costs on race day. We can pile onto this another evergreen truth: many athletes ride harder than their trained potential allows. Optimizing swim fitness yields high overall return, even if your swim splits don’t improve by much, and being pragmatic on the bike then opens the door for your running preparation to shine.
Fuel and Hydrate: Optimal approaches to fueling and hydration have evolved dramatically in recent years. If you want to do a deep dive, here’s a webinar with myself and Andy Blow of Precision Hydration: https://go.purplepatchfitness.com/smart-fuel-hydration.
But no matter your approach to nutrition - your run performance relies on you getting off the bike without huge dehydration and enough substrates to allow trained potential to emerge.
Racing Shoe Choice: Avoid choosing racing shoes that cause high mechanical fatigue. In longer distance racing, comfort and cushion beat super light racing flats. Modern shoes can be very light but lack support and cushion, so don’t save 3 ounces at the cost of padding that offsets muscular damage.
Embrace The Stroll: There is a common piece of advice that I wish was banned from triathlon. This advice is, “whatever you do, don’t walk.” The saying originates from the idea of mental toughness and a belief that once you walk it will become too easy to keep walking. Instead, I encourage you to shift your lens on walking to become a catalyst to optimize run speed. Almost every amateur athlete will benefit from walk breaks over long course racing, particularly at the IRONMAN distance. You should include short breaks early so you can run with great form and speed in the middle to back half of the race.
If you adopt the patient approach, build the toolset in training, then execute pragmatically on race day, the results are always positive. This is the optimal approach if you want to feel empowered, gain performance predictability, and enjoy your running.
And don’t forget, walking isn’t just for middle or back-of-the-packers. Some of our amateur athletes who run under 80 minutes in 70.3 distances, and sub 3 hours off the bike in IRONMAN, integrate walk breaks.
Cheers,
Matt