Anatomy of a step up run
Breaking it down.
There are different flavors of tempo training. This is training that is at or near your race pace effort. One of the most effective methodologies for endurance running and racing is a training run where you systematically increase the intensity through the workout.
One of my bread and butter workouts is a step up run. I’m going to unpack the step up run work out for you today. The example I’m going to use is a one hour step up run. In a one hour step up run you are going to do 10 minutes at an easy effort, 20 minutes at a medium effort, 20 minutes at a hard effort and 10 minutes easy to cool down.
Today I’m going to unpack the detail of a one hour step up run.
I’m using time as the measure, but you could use distance as well. Use whatever your equivalent round number distance is. For me, the equivalent distance workout would be eight miles. In that case the steps might be a 2 mile warm up, 2 miles at medium, 3 miles at hard and a mile warm down.
In a marathon training program I might run these step-up runs up to an hour and a half in duration or the equivalent 14-16 miles. That’s a hard workout. The ratios scale with the distance. The warm up and cool down is not ever going to be more than 2 miles or 20 minutes, but the medium and hard will scale as the distance or time increases.
As you progress through your training you might do one of these a week. Over the course of the campaign the distance/time would increase in waves. You might start with 30 or 40 minutes then work up from there once you are comfortable with the structure of the effort.
I’ll typically do these on a relatively flat out and back course. If you were doing it by distance and you had a loop of the right distance that would work too. It’s ok to have some rolling hills but you don’t want any monsters that will knock you off your pace and effort. Doing these outside, on a rolling course, in the elements is good because you get to practice pacing in those elements.
One of the interesting things about this run is that if you do an out and back, your return pace is going to be faster than your outbound pace and unless you calculate the offset you’ll finish early. You can geek out and do the algebra, but I just estimate that for a one hour step up out and back I should think about turning around at 33 minutes out.
The beauty of this workout is that it not only increases your fitness, both mental and physical, but it trains you to do the right things in an actual race. It trains you to pace appropriately in the beginning and then close with confidence. These are great for building race fitness and confidence.
You can measure the step up run in three ways. First you can use perceived effort, second you can use pace, third you can use heart rate. Any of these will work and you can mix and match depending on what you have available to you and what you are trying to test.
Perceived effort is fairly inexact. I find that I do the low effort early parts of the workout too hard and then don’t have enough at the end. Perceived effort as a measure is easier for runners with experience. The advantage is that you don’t need anything more than a watch or a marked course.
Pace is good, especially if you are targeting a specific pace for a race. It will help you with your race pace confidence. The disadvantage of pace is that it is hard to control a specific pace on a rolling course outside in the elements. You have to be ok with how up hills, down hills and wind effects your pace. It can be disheartening in the middle of the workout to look at your watch and see you are lagging, just because it’s a windy day or you aren’t feeling it.
I prefer to do these workouts using heart rate. Of course you need a way to measure your heart rate, like a chest strap for your Garmin. You also have to know your heart rate zones. I use a 5 zone system. You should have a heart rate coach help you set your heart rate zones because the default formulas and settings are almost guaranteed to be wrong and it is important to have the right effort level in training.
Once you have your heart rate zones set you can use them in your step up runs.
The initial warm up is at zone 2 or lower. This is a 2 effort on a scale of 1-5. This is easier than your typical easy run with the club. I find that it is hard to find that zone 2 effort level in the warm up and you really have to slow yourself down. Like starting a cold engine it takes a couple minutes for your machine to warm up. Especially in the cold weather.
One trick I use is to run my chest strap under warm water and get it wet before I put it on. This way the contacts are good and it doesn’t slip. Otherwise you may get funky readings until your body heats up.
When we say Zone 2 we mean try to keep it in the middle of the zone. 2.5 is great. 2.2 is ok. 2.8 is ok. But it is better to err on the easy side in your warm up because you want to have energy left for the important phase of the workout, the hard effort at the end.
The same is true with the medium effort and hard effort. Target the middle of the zone. As you get into the hard phase, the zone 4 effort you can judge how much you have. The important thing is to budget your effort in a way that you can finish the workout. It is preferable to not have to stop during your hard effort.
You’ll get a feel for what effort levels are appropriate for you as you do a couple of these. My advice would be to keep it on the low end of the zone until you know you can finish the workout. Then play with letting the effort creep up in subsequent workouts until you find that failure point. It’s always better to have it at the end than to waste it in the beginning. Just like in a real race.
Your body is not a digital machine. It won’t transition from zone 2 to zone 3 with the flip of a switch. It will take you a few of these workouts to learn how to manage the transitions. Initially you will be tempted to increase the effort too much when you change zones. You will overshoot and have to bring it back down.
The best way to manage this is to incrementally increase your cadence a little bit at a time and let the heart rate creep up into the new zone. It’s like learning to drive a car. At first you yank the steering wheel back and forth, over correcting, and then you eventually learn to steer with one finger, with smooth, easy increments.
Try to avoid stopping at the transition points. Strive to make this one continuous work out. Keep the legs and the form consistent as you ratchet up the effort.
The other important thing to practice is not changing your form as you go through the zone transitions. You should have the same good form at all paces. Don’t start to over stride or break your mechanics in the hard effort. Keep your form upright and your hips forward. Manage your effort by varying the speed of your turnover not by increasing your stride length.
The hills will be a challenge. It’s ok to let your heart rate creep up as you’re climbing the rolling hills just keep it from blowing up by adjusting your cadence. More importantly you want to keep in your target zone on the rolling down hills by pulling you elbows back for counter balance and increasing your turnover. I find the down hills harder to pace than the up hills.
Your body will help you with the increased heart rate as you get into the later stages of the workout. As you fatigue your heart rate naturally creeps up.
What you will find with this work out is that the ‘hard’ phase, the zone 4 effort is a challenge. It will take mental and physical strength and stamina to hold that effort level with good form for those last 20 minutes. If you start to get into trouble don’t blow up and stop. Incrementally let your cadence drop until the episode passes and then incrementally bring it back up until you find a spot that works.
Unless you completely blow up it’s better to manage a slower pace or a lower effort level until you recover. That’s why finding the right effort level for the early phase of the work out is so important. If you are too aggressive early, you will blow up before you can finish the hard bit. I know. I’ve done it many times. It takes time to find that balance. You can always spend your extra energy at the end of the hard step if you have too much left by throwing in a little 5K pace surge to close it.
That is a step up run. You will have noticed by now why these are so effective. They force you to figure out how to mentally manage the discomfort of running at a high effort level in the second half of a workout. They force you to find the balance and tradeoff of effort and strength at the end of a workout. These are things that you need to perform well in any endurance race.