It’s Not What You Think

Runners are often wrong about what’s limiting their performance and what to do about it.

One of my favorite things to do as a coach is analyze race performances. A day or two after an athlete of mine competes, we get together online and talk about what went well and what didn’t, what stopped the athlete from doing even better, and how to address that limiter going forward.

In many cases, however, I disagree with the athlete’s take on why they didn’t get from point A to point B a little quicker. From my perspective, athletes are often just plain wrong about their limiters, and they’re wrong in ways that betray a poor understanding of what it takes to maximize performance. Far from passing judgment at these moments, I treat them as opportunities to teach athletes some basic truths about athletic development.

Following are three erroneous takeaways I frequently hear from runners after longer races, and the truths they obscure. Do any of them sound familiar?

“I need to get stronger.”

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a runner say this after a disappointing marathon, I’d drive a Rolls Royce. It’s a common scenario: Around 20 mile, the runner’s quads or calves start to hurt and they slow down. Afterward, they make the following assumptions:

1) The pain in their muscles was the reason they slowed down

2) If those muscles were stronger, they would have hurt less and the late-race slowdown would have been avoided.

Now, I will admit that if I heard this takeaway from an athlete who ran 80 miles per week and did zero strength training, I might give it some credence. But in fact I’ve only ever heard it from relatively low-mileage runners, because the true limiter in this scenario is not muscle strength but muscular endurance, and the best way to increase running-specific muscular endurance is to do shitloads of running. Indeed, if you want to see someone crippled by muscle pain during a marathon, ask a ridiculously strong powerlifter who doesn’t run to run a marathon.

Think about it: How strong do you have to be to hop on one foot a single time? Not very. And how much stronger do you have to be to hop 27,500 times alternately on each foot (which is what the average runner does in completing a marathon)? Again, not very. Just because you feel it in your muscles doesn’t mean it’s a strength thing. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, the key to preventing muscle pain from ruining a longer race is to run more, and maybe also mix in a fair amount of downhill running.

“I need to work on my speed.”

Here’s another overly simplistic explanation that runners often give after disappointing races. Like the previous example, it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense: A runner comes into a race hoping to hold a certain pace but they fall short. Why? Because they’re not fast enough!

If the race in question were a sprint, this explanation would hold water. But a runner who, for example, starts a half marathon hoping to sustain a pace of 4:10 per km but ends up averaging 4:15 per km doesn’t need more speed; they just need 4:10 pace to be easier. Specifically, they need to have a higher aerobic capacity (or VO₂max), so that 4:10 pace equates to a lower intensity; better running economy, so that 4:10 pace is less metabolically costly; and greater fatigue resistance, so the runner doesn’t fatigue as quickly at this pace.

Speed work (which we can loosely define as interval training featuring high-intensity efforts sustainable for 1 minute or less) won’t do much to address these limiters. To increase their VO₂max, runners need to run a lot and run at or near VO₂max pace (for 6-7 minutes) in select workouts. To improve their running economy, runners need to run a lot, run at a variety of speeds, and spend time running in a fatigued state. And to increase their fatigue resistance, runners need to run a lot, run far, and run in a fatigued state.

“I need to work on my form.”

Runners often feel their form erode in the latter stages of longer races and blame this erosion for their unsatisfactory performance. They might also compare their form unfavorably to that of competitors who leave them behind in the late going. Together, these experiences leave many runners thinking the key to doing better next time is to learn “proper” form.

There are multiple problems with this takeaway. One is that you can’t judge running efficiency by the eye test, so it makes no sense to compare one’s form to that of other runners. Another problem is that it’s natural for running form to change over the course of a race, and research suggests these changes actually preserve running economy in the face of fatigue rather than worsening it. Yet another problem is that there’s zero evidence that enforcing a one-size-fits-all running style on individual runners yields better performance.

I’m not saying that running form is never a limiter and can’t be improved. But if you want to start your next race with better form, you should eschew technique training and simply run more, as there’s plenty of evidence that running form improves automatically if you just run. And if you want your form to hold up better during your next race, your best move is to just get fitter, as studies also show that running economy decreases less in fitter runners during exhaustive running.

A Coach Can Help

Let me be clear: Runners don’t learn the wrong lessons from races because they’re dumb; they do it because they’re unlearned. Many truths of endurance performance are counterintuitive, and when people are unlearned in a certain area, they go by intuition. Having a knowledgeable coach in your corner can spare you from suffering the consequences of pursuing naïve intuitions in response to suboptimal race performances and provide the education you need to draw the right takeaways from future races.

Your next best option is to keep reading Endurance Mastery!