Watch any elite runner and you’ll see their heel kicking up to their buttocks as the leg moves forwards. I have a whole bunch of terms for this – butt kick, heel lift, back lift which I am going to use interchangeably through this article.
From an efficiency perspective it is very important. The days of people owning mechanical clocks are now all but gone, so the majority of people probably have little idea about how the length of a pendulum affects its movement. Basically a long pendulum swings slower than a short one and vice versa. You can test this by grabbing a piece of string, tying an object to the bottom and swinging it at different lengths.
Applying this concept to running – a short leg will swing quicker than a long one. Tall people tend to have slightly slower cadences than shorter people and it is why, when small children run their legs appear to go like the clappers. Of course, once you’re fully grown you can’t change the leg of your legs, you’re stuck with your genetics, unless a disaster happens.
Yet shortening one’s leg is effectively what an elite runner does when they kick their heel up to their backside. As the foot passes closer to the body and above knee height they have essentially halved the length of their leg. It is now only as long as their femur measures from hip to knee. This is sometimes referred to as shortening the lever. A shorter leg comes forwards quicker than a straighter leg helping to reposition it ready for the next step.
With recreational runners we rarely see this butt kick taking place. With some runners it is like they are walking fast, keeping their legs straight – moving them back and forth with a high cadence and barely leaving the ground. To varying degrees, other runners will lift their trailing foot off the ground – some lift it just a few inches whereas others may have it passing the support leg at calf or even knee height. Once in a while you see recreational runners who have an exaggerated back lift even if they are only moving at a moderate pace, such as eight minute miles. It is almost certainly something they have been taught to do and there are certainly many coaches / Youtubers who advocate doing this. The trouble is while deliberately lifting the heel to the backside seems desirable for the efficiency reasons previously mentioned, it is not.
Don’t initiate ‘the pull’
It’s likely ‘shortening the lever’ will help you run faster, at least in the short-term. To do it you just pull your heel to your butt – to do this you engage the hamstrings. The problem is, this isn’t how it should occur or what the hamstrings are best used for. What they should do is control how quickly the lower leg unfurls once your leg is out in front of the body. This isn’t a conscious process, it just happens with every step you take. Like any muscle they will eventually become tired and fatigued so if you are mistakenly using your hamstrings to actively pull your heel, you’re going to tire them out needlessly.
How to butt kick
The reason you don’t need to actively lift your heel is because when you run correctly it naturally happens. In my look at glute-powered running, In a previous post, I discussed how an elite runner like David Rudisha uses his glutes to swing his leg from in front of him to behind. At some point the thigh physically cannot go any further back and he tips up into a toe-off.
Looking at a snapshot of what happens a few frames later we see his thigh has barely moved but the lower leg has begun to lift. This is momentum transferring down the leg through what is referred to as the kinetic chain. It generates power in many sporting actions from kicking a football, throwing a javelin, swinging a golf club to delivering a knockout punch. Energy is generated by big powerful muscles and then transferred to the smaller extremities to achieve a higher speed. It’s the same process that allows Indiana Jones to to crack his whip – his arm and body begin the movement and then the energy transfers through the handle and down the whip to create the cracking sound.
For Rudisha, after the leg appears to momentarily pause, it then begins to move forward. This is powered by the elastic energy that has been stored in the muscles on the front of the hip and thigh. When the leg was moving backwards these muscles were being stretched like an elastic band and now, just like when the elastic band is let go they ping back to their normal length. This pulls the thigh forward, but it doesn’t affect the lower leg so that continues its journey towards the runner’s butt.
Eventually the lower leg either runs out of momentum or reaches its closest point to the butt. If everything is timed well, it is enough to carry it under the runner’s body as a shortened lever.
Composite image of David Rudisha’s stride showing the heel lift and pass under the body
Not everybody butt kicks
Given that I’m describing this as a natural sequence of events, you might expect everybody to lift their heel to their backside and kick butt yet this isn’t what we see. The main reason is you have to be running at high speed for it to happen. You won’t see any sprinter who doesn’t butt kick and this isn’t taught to them except by bad coaches – it just happens.
Your legs have to be moving back and forth quickly to create the momentum in the lower leg. Quite how fast you need to be is some undefined combination of factors such as pace, leg length, foot weight and stride rate.
All elite distance runners back kick because they are rarely run slower than five minute miles. The women’s marathon is the slowest elite distance race and Tigist Assefa can be seen butt kicking on the way to her marathon world record.
Tigist Assefa running behind two pacers demonstrating a high heel lift at 5min/mile
Yet if you see an elite distance runner out for a jog, at say nine minute mile pace, their heel doesn’t kick their butt. The foot will come off the ground but it is not the efficient shortened lever. At slower speed the leg just doesn’t have the momentum to carry the foot up to recover close to the backside.
There is another reason why we often don’t see any backlift in recreational runners and this is because many over-rotate their hips which I discussed in this post. Instead of the leg swinging straight backwards and forwards with a long range of motion to create power and momentum, a shorter stride length is creating by turning the hips. Arguably this may simply be a factor explaining why they’re slower at running but I noticed in the footage of Tigist Asseffa breaking the world marathon record, she appears to have one foot lift higher than the other. I suspect this is due to over-rotation of the hips as it is reflected in one shoulder rolling more than the other. She is not the only long distance runner who seems to have some inefficiency in this area.
Final thoughts
Kicking the heel to butt for more efficient recovery is something which occurs with good running form and mechanics. Attempting to force it by pulling your heel up is unnecessary and will tire the hamstrings. Arguably it could be beneficial to slower runners but the counterargument is that spending the time learning to pull the foot up is training time that could be used to improve speed so it happens naturally. Ingraining bad form is unlikely to be a good idea because it is harder to undo later on. To get the natural heel lift, you need to get the glutes firing and the leg swinging through to an extended toe-off.
The information detailed here is based on personal experience and that contained in Steve Magness’ The Science of Running Book. Magness was the Cross Country coach at the University of Houston where he was able to speak with Tom Tellez, the track coach who coached many athletes including Carl Lewis who was the 100m world record holder during the 1980s and 1990s.
I used to coach a triathlete who had decided to run a marathon. In our discussions he told me that one of the tough parts of a triathlon is the transition from cycling to running. You get off the bike and then when you start to run, the legs feel like rubber and they take a couple of minutes to adjust. I later heard people say cycling is quad-dominant whereas running is glute-dominant. While nice descriptors it didn’t really explain what was going on.
The glutes are the muscles in your backside or rear, the quads are in your thighs. You can find many articles written about runners who have lazy glutes due to sitting at a desk all day and suggesting exercises to activate them. Along the way I’ve tried many of these, both for strengthening and activation without much success. As a kid, I cycled everywhere so my thighs grew big and muscular and no doubt that led me to be quad-dominant in powering all the exercise I did.
If you’re a cyclist, or like me were one, this post is going to help you understand how it could be holding you back from achieving your running potential. If you’re a runner, like I’ve been for over a decade, you’ll probably benefit from understanding how using your glutes to their full extent might help your running. I’ll explain the difference between quad and glute dominant exercising; showing why runners should be aiming to get their glutes active and providing some ideas on how to do this.
Cycling is quad-dominant
Here is a cyclist sitting in a recommended position for setting up the saddle. Opinions vary as to the correct method but they are all small variations of what you can see – the leg almost, but not quite, straight when the pedal crank is at the bottom. The yellow lines indicate parts of the bike – the saddle position and the pedal cranks. When they’re vertical the cyclist will have one foot at the highest and the other at the lowest point of the pedal stroke. We’re particularly interested in the lower point because that is the furthest the foot gets away.
Most of us have been on a bike and we know that each stroke is powered by pushing down on the pedal. When the foot reaches the bottom, the other foot has reached the top and it then takes over pushing down to keep the pedals turning. In essence the cyclist is always pushing down on the pedal to power the bike forward. There is also some debate as to whether cyclists should pull on the upstroke to assist. Even so, all this pushing down, and any pulling up, is due to the quad muscles in the thighs – along with some assistance from the hamstrings and calves.
What doesn’t contribute to the stroke (very much) are the glute muscles sitting on the saddle. There may be a contribution but it’s minimal because the pedals limit how high and low the thighs can move and therefore how much effect the glutes have. You can see the thighs are about 45 degrees apart and as you will see the glutes don’t move much.
Running is glute-dominant
Now let’s look at a world class runner – David Rudisha. I examined his stride length in a previous article where I estimated it to be 2.45m. You can see in the picture below his legs are about 90 degrees apart. So already his glutes are moving through a greater range of motion than the cyclist’s.
His knees don’t come up as high as the cyclist when they come forward. A runner with good form allows the knee lift to occur naturally through elastic energy rather than a conscious lifting of the thighs. This elastic energy is created by the hip flexors on the front side stretching as the leg goes backwards. When the ‘backside’ work has been done, just like an elastic band snapping tight, the hip flexors pull the leg forward.
We also see David Rudisha is extending his leg behind him to the point where only his toes are still in contact with the ground. His back leg is straight from hip to ankle as it transfers force to the ground. His ankle is still a little flexed but having looked at multiple pictures and video, it doesn’t appear Rudisha can fully straighten at the ankle which would be better. The key point to notice is that his leg is extending behind his body which is due to a powerful hip extension. To run forward, he has pushed the ground away behind him.
Running and cycling side by side
If we now compare Rudisha to the cyclist, but rotate the latter so his torso is upright, we see a massive difference between them.
It’s clear from this picture that the legs of the cyclist are always in front of him. There may be some pelvic tilt in his seating to achieve a better aerodynamic position but it’s not enough to be relevant. The position of the saddle, the pedals and cranks ensure his thighs and feet only move in a limited range – the equivalent of 2 – 3:30pm on a clock face. By comparison, Rudisha’s legs are working from about 4:30 – 7pm. The ranges of motion don’t even overlap.
In the cyclist’s rotated position, it’s easier to see how their thighs and knees will piston up and down in front of them. In the normal orientation we see the pedal being pushed down, here perhaps we can think of it being pushed away from the body. This push is achieved by the thigh muscles straightening the knee until it almost locks out. It’s similar to how rowers power each stroke by straightening their legs. This is why cycling is considered a thigh-dominant activity. Of course, dominant doesn’t mean only; so there can be contribution from other muscle groups – just not as much.
Glutes power the stride
Let’s now see why running is glute-dominant with another look at David Rudisha. In this picture he is still airborne with his leg having come forward as far as it will during this stride. Although it’s not easy to see – his lead foot hasn’t even touched the ground yet. He is about to start using his glutes to continue running fast!
As the yellow arrows show his leg will swing backwards with the foot hitting the ground just ahead of his body. He will continue to propel his leg backwards and his foot will momentarily be stationary on the ground as his body passes over it, just like a pole vaulter arcs over the planted pole. As best possible, his leg will remain straight all the way through to the toe-off. Typically the quicker the running speed, the stiffer the landing leg tends to be.
He will attempt to maximise pushing the ground away behind him by fully extending his rear leg until only his toes are in contact with the ground as we saw in the earlier photo. When that point is reached the leg will naturally fold up behind him and pass forward under the body due to the elastic energy created by the stretched hip flexors. The runner doesn’t need to trying to do anything to bring the leg forward or lift the knee.
The glutes
Swinging the leg backwards is powered by the glute muscles which are a group of three muscles in the buttock area. In recent years the Kim Kardashians of the influencer world have attracted attention to them by getting implants and doing exercises specifically intended to make them larger.
Gluteus minimus not shown
In running we’re interested in using the glutes to extend the hip. Again this is the sort of phrase that doesn’t mean much without thought, and it’s possibly easier to understand it by thinking about what happens when you stand up. The legs move from being at 90 degrees in front of you to straightened below you. Extension of a joint is straightening it. Hip extension is straightening at the hip – it increases the angle on the front side.
In this picture of a glute muscle we can see them crossing the back of the hip and pelvis. If the person were now to stand we can imagine that the glute muscles would ball up to give the Kardashian look – just as a biceps muscle gets bigger when it is flexed. This is why runners, especially sprinters want big, strong glute muscles.
When runners flex the glute muscles the leg moves backwards and the front of their hip straightens. When the foot hits the ground, the continued action of contracting the glutes causes the leg to pass below the torso and then behind. Of course we rarely feel this as contracting our glutes, it feels more like pushing the ground behind.
The issue is people usually have no reason to flex the glutes that far back and if we’re not practiced on it, we don’t do it as runners. When we stand we only contract the glute as much as necessary to bring ourselves to an upright position. We only need our knees and feet to be directly below us. When we walk we move the leg a little behind us but do it slowly and not too far. Then we often take our next step by falling forward and rolling onto the heel of the lead foot.
As Rudisha shows there is a range of motion where using the glutes deliberately will create a full and powerful hip extension so that the leg and foot move further behind. Unfortunately this is not what quad-dominant runners or cyclists with their strong thighs and poor glute activation do when they run.
How cyclists often run
We saw in previous pictures, the typical cycling position doesn’t even bring the cyclist’s feet to the ground if they are turned upright. Obviously this isn’t what happens in real life when a cyclist tries to run.
While cyclists are very good at pushing the foot to the ground using the thighs and exerting push, they often don’t learn to extend the leg back past the vertical. Instead almost as soon as the foot has landed they feel the stride is complete and pick the knee back up. Where the runner’s leg comes forward using elastic energy, the cyclist uses their strong thigh muscles and hip flexors to lift the knee ready for the next stride.
Statistically this gives them the sort of measures their sportswatch likes – high cadence and short ground contact time – so they think they’re doing the right thing. What they lose though is stride length as the foot doesn’t push them as far forwards as it could with a longer range of motion. As Steve Magness writes in The Science of Running “Often, the mistake is made in trying to get the foot off the ground as quickly as possible, but remember it is only when the foot is on the ground that force is transferred to the ground. While having a short ground contact time is beneficial, it should be a result of transferring force faster and not of getting quicker with the foot.” (p.307)
Strengthening glutes
I’m a big believer that once you start using the correct muscles to do the job they quickly strengthen themselves up with regular running. Even so there are a variety of initial strengthening exercises you can try which may help. These include step-ups, one-legged deadlifts, hip thrusts or frog-legged bridges. As starter exercises for getting more strength into the glutes and supporting muscles they are good options but they don’t take you past straight hips and therefore don’t mimic that extra bit of power we’re looking for.
Donkey kick demo in the garden
Donkey kicks may be the best exercise for really squeezing the glutes but other than by adding ankle weights it’s not possible to create resistance for adding strength and power. If you lie on your back and do hip thrusts you can add resistance especially if you progress to doing them on a one-legged, on a step or with a weight across your hips.
But having strong muscles doesn’t guarantee using them during runs. If your movement patterns are wrong, it doesn’t matter how strong the muscle is they won’t help out. A simple example of this principle is when people try to pick up a heavy object. Health and safety advises them to bend their knees and use their legs. More often than not people simply bend over at the waist and strain their back. It doesn’t matter how strong their legs are if they don’t use the correct technique.
I haven’t described these exercises in detail but a quick internet search will turn up a myriad of articles or Youtube videos demonstrating them.
Activating glutes
To begin to get the movement correct you need activation exercises. A simple one is to imagine pushing a shopping trolley or pushchair. Basically to imagine there is something that will block your legs from swinging ahead of you which forces you to push the foot or leg backwards to create the propulsion to go forwards.
You can also try standing with your back against a wall and then stepping away from it. Feel the back of the leg and heel push off the wall using the muscles around the hips.
Walking lunges can be a good exercise for creating the hip flexor stretch and getting the glutes to work. They also work as a good balance and coordination exercise. You really have to focus on getting the glutes to work.
These sort of activation exercises may work at giving you the feeling you’re looking for but personally I never managed to carry them over into my running.
Toeing off
While David Rudisha doesn’t appear able to full point his toes he is certainly pushing his foot and toes as far back as possible. The following compilation of pictures of Seb Coe show how great his form was in this area.
Practicing toeing off has been the exercise I found most useful. When your foot hits the ground put pressure through your big toe and push your foot all the backwards until the leg is fully extended behind you and you are up on your toes. NB This is not running on your toes but pivoting up onto them when the leg is at its furthest point back.
Peter Coe, coach and father of Seb, highlights in Better Training for Distance Runners” that a fully straightened ankle which has pivoted over will leave the ground late and create extra stride length over that of a runner who either keeps their foot flat on the floor or with the heel barely lifted off. This pivoting can adds over the length of the runner’s foot to each stride.
To achieve strong ankles and good rear leg extension, Arthur Lydiard the great running coach of the 1960s, had three strengthening exercises – steep hill running, hill bounding and hill springing – which he scheduled as a four week phase prior to speedwork. He is quoted in Healthy Intelligent Training as saying “Increase in speed comes from flicking of the ankles. If you want speed, you don’t need to be built like a body-builder. You need to be like a ballet dancer, with springy and bouncy ankles” (p.118). However Steve Magness writes “Unlike what many suggest, do not try to get any extra propulsion out of pushing off with the toes consciously.” (p. 307)
There’s clearly a contradiction between what these two coaches are proposing but there is no doubt a fully extended leg with pointed toes is critical to achieving speed and stride length. My own interpretation is that by pushing the foot through for the full stride, you naturally lever up onto the tip of the shoe and your toes. Knowing that Lydiard’s hill strengthening came at the end of months of aerobic distance training, his exercises were there to help runners get used to this action again. Once you’ve got strong ankles and good technique you probably won’t even notice it happening and there will be no flick. I think the key to Magness’ statement is about not consciously flicking the ankle, as there runners who try to get a bit extra by doing this but are actually creating inefficiency in the mechanics.
Whether Lydiard or Magness is right about ‘the flick’ doesn’t matter for most runners as it’s a “1% improvement” whereas many runners haven’t mastered the gross movement of pushing with their glutes to end up toeing off which is where the big gains will be made. Initially if you aren’t pivoting up to toe-off, you aren’t getting the most out of your glutes and will need to go through a conscious phase of deliberately toeing off to achieve this.
Lydiard’s hill exercises also work on getting that rear leg extension we’re seeing in Coe and Rudisha. I’ve found this is best achieved by ensuring the back of the knee straightens, that it feels almost as if it’s being pushed back beyond what is physically possible.
Ultimately even your running shoes are built to enable you to toe-off. Every pair has the sole extending forward, up over the front of the shoe yet few runners actually wear this down. When you look at how far it turns up you realise how much encouragement you have to do this.
Summing up
The best runners in the world power their running by using their glutes. The glute muscles swing the leg backwards from its further point out in front of the body to the furthest point behind. Elite runners push the ground away behind them and then allow elastic energy to bring the leg forward again for the next step. Each time their foot hits the ground they are pushing themselves on to maintain speed or accelerate just as a skateboarder keeps the deck rolling by occasionally pawing the ground with their foot.
This contrasts to the average runner, or those who are thigh-dominant, who stopping pushing with their glutes when their foot hits the ground, allowing their momentum to carry them over it as they pick the knee back up. In doing this they decelerate while the foot is on the ground, miss out on stride length and the free elastic energy available for bringing the leg forwards. As Matt Fitzgerald states in The Cutting Edge Runner “when you retract your leg properly, your foot feels as though it grips the ground rather than lands on it. From this point all you have to do is keep thrusting backwards, and you will have effectively minimised any stance phase and the deceleration that comes with it.” (p.152)
Making changes is never easy and if you start using muscles that have never been engaged before, they will have some catching up to do. Like a slower runner trying to keep up with a faster pack, they’ll be left fatigued and sore until they have gained the fitness to be part of the group. If necessary back off the pace and distance of your runs, take extra days rest until you begin to feel adapted. Once the correct muscles are active they will start to work for you, the new form will increasingly become second nature and the muscles and tendons will strengthen for themselves as you get faster or try more demanding sessions.
References
Coe, P. & Martin, D. (1997) Better Training for Distance Runners.
Fitzgerald, M. (2005) Runner’s World The Cutting Edge Runner.
Livingstone, K. (2009) Healthy Intelligent Training.
Never before have I seen what happened at the World Athletics Championships in the last two races of the opening night occur.
First it was the women’s 10,000m where Netherland’s Sifan Hassan was attempting to complete a treble of winning, or at least medalling, in the 1500, 5000 and 10,000 metres. The race began slowly – the first km of 3min30 is one even I can run and Hassan tagged on to the back of the pack. With each passing lap the pace quickened up so that by the last lap it came down to a sprint. As the bell sounded, Hassan pulled away being tracked and challenged by the Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay. Entering the home straight, Hassan was still leading by a metre but clearly tiring. She began to drift out and swung her elbow back into Tsegay’s chest. A second contact unbalanced Hassan and she stumbled and fell twenty metres from the line allowing Tsegay to pass and take gold. Already Hassan’s treble ambitions had gone.
Immediately after we watched the Mixed 4x400m relay where the USA were favoured. Great Britain & Northern Ireland had set a national record while running the 2nd quickest time in the heats and now had hopes of a medal. For the Dutch, Femke Bol had anchored their team to victory in the heats and seemed to sprint home with ease. At the final baton changeover, the USA and Netherlands handed over almost side by side but then Bol took off to open up a 2-3 metre lead. By the time she reached the home straight little had changed other than GB&NI had slipped 15metres behind but comfortably positioned in 3rd place for the bronze medal. With fifty metres left, USA’s Alexis Holmes closed on Femke Bol but still hadn’t passed her. As the finish line was about to come into view on screen, Bol began to stumble then fell with the line only metres away. The slow motion replay showed her scraping along the track with a full-on face plant. The fall was enough to allow the USA to pass for gold and then as Bol stood up, Britain’s Yemi Mary John also passed to take silver. To add insult to minor injury, although Bol managed to scramble across the line third the Netherlands were disqualified as she had dropped the baton.
You see runners get clipped in the middle of long distance races and even able to get back up and run. Sometimes they are down and out. I’ve rarely seen an athlete trip and fall at the end of the race. I don’t know what the odds on two runners from the same nation falling while leading in back-to-back races are – but they seem long.
When I began running it wasn’t uncommon for it to be known as jogging. Being a jogger or going out for a jog was the standard term. Yet somewhere in the last decade or so, this term has almost become pejorative and insulting. Everyone now wants to think of themselves as a runner.
In his book Better Training for Distance Runners, which was first published in 1991, Peter Coe describes jogging as “very slow running – 7 to 8 min/mi for talented young-adult men (4:21 to 4:58 min/km) and 8 to 9 min/mi for talented young-adult women (4:58 to 5:36 min/km). For runners not so talented, as well as for older runners, these paces would be slower.” (p.177)
It’s always stuck in my mind that he put a number on it yet revisiting the quote I notice he actually defines jogging relative to ability (or expected ability). He doesn’t simply say “anything slower than 7 minute miling is jogging” he qualifies it. He sees jogging as a slower version of running.
I have to say I don’t find moving at 7min/mile pace to be easy or what I think of as a jog but then I am neither talented nor young!
Even so the idea of jogging is one I feel is underrated. My recovery days are all jogs as I define them and which I suspect Peter Coe would agree with. Very easy runs that barely feel like I’m putting in effort. On a good day this is currently around 8:20/mile, on the bad days it is slower and still feels a little struggle due to soreness or tired muscles.
A while back I was working on building my stride length by running sprints on the flat and hills. I did this through May and then my right hip-glute area felt fatigued. I put the sprints on hold and went jogging. After a week or two the hip area felt good enough to resume the sprints. I then upped them to twice per week and felt the creep of fatigue coming back into my right hip area. After five weeks, there came a point when I knew I’d done enough and I went back to jogging. This time the jogging was very slow by my standards – slower than 9 minute miling and on one run averaging 9:50/mile. It doesn’t really matter whether this is objectively fast or slow, it was jogging and felt very easy at my current level.
I am a big proponent of jogging, without looking at your watch for pace or heart-rate, to aid recovery. As I write above, sometimes I think this needs to be for an extended period until the body feels good. One of the extra benefits is you can still go out for a ‘run’ every day and mentally tick off the exercise box.
For some reason, the vast majority of ‘runners’ don’t seem to embrace jogging these days. They always feel they have to be doing some kind of session. They might throw in the occasional easier day but more often they take a rest day instead. When they have an ache or pain they never see it as worthwhile to go with a period of easy running until the body recovers. I think they are missing out.
It was early June when Faith Kipyegon became the first woman to run 1,500m in under 3:50; last night she shattered the mile record. Running 4:07.64 it was almost five seconds quicker than Sifan Hassan ran in 2019.
Faith Kipyegon on her way to a new women’s mile WR
There’s no doubt Kipyegon is in form, having also broken the 5,000m world record in Paris in June. She’s obviously training well but it’s not just her. While Kipyegon finished seven seconds clear, every other runner in the race recorded a Personal Best and there were three continental records and six national records. Five of the women taking part are now among the top-8 fastest milers of all-time. This is unprecedented and you have to wonder why.
The first and simplest explanation is that the mile isn’t raced often. It’s an old Imperial race distance which is still popular in the U.S.A. and holds significance for men with the four-minute mile. But the Olympics and World Championships race the metric distance of 1,500m.
An immediate assumption might be to point to performance-enhancing drugs. The spectre of doping is always a cloud hanging over athletics and while it’s possible, perhaps even probable, someone in the race is using, you can’t have a race full of dopers and somehow avoiding any one of them getting caught. There has to be something else going on.
Perhaps it’s the track as Monaco was also where Hassan set the previous record and it has a reputation for fast middle distance races in recent years. It wasn’t just the women’s 1,500 where fast times were recorded last night, there were three men running 12:42 in the 5,000m and eight men under 1:44 in the 800m. For comparison, Mo Farah’s personal best over 5,000m was 12:53 and at last year’s Oregon World Championships only one man ran under 1:44 in the 800m final.
Perhaps Monaco itself isn’t faster, it’s simply that its Diamond League meeting is usually held at this time of year and that coincides with athletes getting close to their best. Everyone will be looking to hit their peak in a month’s time at the World Championships in Budapest. For some there’s a little extra to come, some may have peaked too early and others will just be holding on.
It’s the shoes
Anyone who has been following athletics in recent years cannot have missed how many records have been shattered in the long distance races from 5,000m on up to marathon. It’s not just world records but national records as well as personal bests for many athletes. While there may be some improvement due to refined coaching and training methods, it’s impossible not to have heard about the shoes.
Nike introduced the Vaporfly shoes in 2017 and claim they can improve a runner’s performance by up to 4.2%. This occurs through a combination of a carbon-fibre plate in the sole and lighter, bouncier foam which results in the runner using lesser effort and saving energy. As the results show this has been massively beneficial to the point where they are standard for all elite distance runners now.
It’s also understood however that that the benefits of the Vaporflys and similar models only apply to long distance races. For sprinters and middle distance runners on the track they find the Vaporflys feel squishy whereas the spikes they use give better traction. This is why the shoe companies developed a superspike with prototypes beginning to appear in 2019. Again these spikes have a carbon-fibre plate and more efficient foam but with different shaping and geometry.
Although the exact reasons why superspikes help isn’t understood, we’re seeing it benefit track athletes. There have been world records set in the men’s and women’s 400m hurdles by Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone respectively and by Tobi Amusan in the women’s 100m hurdles. It should be noted that, at the time of writing which is a year after she broke the record, Amusan has been provisionally suspended for missing drugs tests. In her case, it may not be the shoes! Undoubtedly though many athletes, especially women, in the short sprints have been setting Personal Bests and National Records, just as happened in the mile race.
Why allow the advantage?
Track and field athletics is no longer the crowd draw it once was. It’s fighting with other sports for television and media coverage and for the money and revenues those attract. Athletics will always be the centrepiece of the Olympics but outside of that, it often holds little interest to most people. Athletics stadia are not packed like football grounds, it is not a sport people regularly turn out to watch. In Britain, the TV coverage is hidden away on BBC3 which is only available online or by Red Button.
Keeping partners, whether official or not, happy is something World Athletics have to consider in a world where it is a business as much as a sport. For the shoe companies who introduce expensive new shoes promising to make every runner faster it is an important way to grow their profits. While it would have been an easy decision for World Athletics to ban the shoes it would likely lead to shoe companies cutting their budgets for research and development and focusing on the fashion trainer market and other sports. Many athletes have shoe deals with the shoe companies and therefore a ban could have impacted them. World Athletics did eventually introduce restrictions to the dimensions of the road shoes in 2020 but it didn’t ban them outright and consequently we have seen records being smashed time and time again.
All of this is a reminder of what happened in swimming in 2008 when new bodysuits were introduced and over 200 world records were broken. Eventually the governing body intervened, wiped those records and banned the suits. But this was different, your average person who goes swimming at the local pool wasn’t going to go out and buy a go-faster body suit so the commercial impact to the apparel companies was small.
Yet the same argument can be made about track superspikes. The market for them is small and if World Athletics were to ban them it wouldn’t impact the revenues of the shoe companies significantly.
Wiping the record books
It puzzled me why the super shoes have been allowed until I considered that perhaps Lord Coe, as head of World Athletics, is happy for the world records to be broken. Obviously it generates clicks and headlines for World Athletics which can never be a bad thing.
More importantly though, many of the women’s world records are disputed as they were set in an era before out of competition drug testing took place. Florence Griffith-Joyner set the 100 and 200m world records in the summer of 1988, East German Marita Koch’s 400m time was set in 1985 and Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 800m was set way back in 1983. We know the East Germans systematically doped and it’s highly likely the same applies to anyone else from the Eastern Bloc. There will always be suspicions about Flo-Jo’s times and certainly there is evidence her 100m was set with an unmeasured tailwind even if doping wasn’t involved. These times were thought beyond reach with other runners barely able to get close and yet, in recent years, it’s begun to look a possibility.
Even after out of competition testing was introduced in 1989 there was another notable set of suspect world records a few years later. These were in the women’s 1500, 3000, 5000 and 10,000m by Chinese athletes who were known as “Ma’s Army” after their coach Ma Junren. While the 1500, 5000 and 10,000m records have since been broken, Wang Junxia’s 3,000m time of 8:06 is still on the books. It came to light in 2015 that Wang and her teammates had written a letter in 1995 accusing their coach of forcing them to take drugs. It is hard, given the lack of subsequent success by Chinese athletes, to believe that their record setting success was simply down to hard work of running a daily marathon at altitude and eating turtle blood soup as Junren claimed.
Getting those records off the books is a desirable thing to World Athletics and if doing that happens to coincide with keeping the shoe companies happy then so be it. I think there is a good chance we will see an attempt at the women’s 3,000m world record at some stage if Faith Kipyegon continues to run well. She is the new 1,500m world record holder with a time which is a second quicker than Wang Junxia’s Personal Best. Like the mile, the women’s 3000m is not a distance which is raced often. It was contested at championships up until 1993 and then replaced with the 5,000m. It will require a special staging of the race, probably at a Diamond League meeting to achieve it. This isn’t out of the question as Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway ran a “World Best” in a two-mile race in June. It was the same Diamond League meeting in Paris where Kipyegon broke the women’s 5,000m world record.
It was New Year’s Day 2012. I’d returned to the scene of my first parkrun around the University of Southampton playing fields in Eastleigh. Ten months earlier, it had been a cold, frosty February morning and I’d gone haring off the start line slowly fading to get round in 23:38. Now with another thirty-five parkruns under my belt, I’d almost broken twenty minutes.
As we stood listening to the briefings, applauding new runners and visitors; it became apparent we had an Olympian in midst. Standing 6’2” with bleached blonde hair and broad chested it was hard to miss Iwan Thomas, especially as he stood head and shoulders above many of the other runners present. Like me, this would be his second Eastleigh parkrun.
As we set off running, I kept an eye on him but my legs were fatigued. I’d run all-out the day before at Poole so gradually he opened up a lead of fifty metres. It stayed like that for the first two laps then on the final one, the gap extended and he finished in 20:45; I trailed in almost a minute behind in 21:35. Of course he never even knew we were racing!
These days Iwan Thomas is often seen on television either as a panellist, contestant or doing roving reports on The One Show. As an international athlete, he was a key part of Great Britain’s 400m success in the 1990s. He won silver in the 4x400m relay at the Atlanta Olympics and gold at the World Championships a year later. He and compatriot Roger Black competed in the Olympic 400m final which was easily won by the legendary Michael Johnson. Roger raced as the 400m British record holder and held it until Iwan broke it in a time of 44.36s. This stood for almost twenty-five years and it was only in May 2022 that Matthew Hudson-Smith finally ran faster than either of these legends.
When his athletics career wound down Iwan began trying longer distances. The London Marathon was an obvious choice where he clocked 3hr58 in 2009 and over the next six years he set personal bests of 40:16 for 10K, 1hr12 for 10 miles and 1hr37 for half marathon. He also took up parkrunning and has racked up over one hundred with a best of 19:18 at Netley Abbey where he usually runs. Currently he’s running around 22-23 minutes there as he approaches fifty.
A couple of years ago in the October 2021 edition of Runners World they detailed his ultrarunning in the South Downs Way 100. That’s one hundred miles from Winchester to Eastbourne. A significant motivator for doing this was to raise money for charity due to difficulties his son suffered after birth. Iwan recognised he’s not built to run ultras saying “I’m 15½ stone. I was designed to go from A to B in 44 seconds. I wasn’t meant to conserve energy and not have high knee lift or a long stride.” When it came to the race, he ended up finishing 304th of 308 finishers in 29hr35. It was a tough race and he was left believing he might have completed it faster as he wasn’t physically ready for it. He’d barely trained in the preceding months due to a tendinitis injury and motorway accident; although race organisers had got him to run a 50-mile ultra as evidence he would capable of the longer event.
Back at Eastleigh parkrun, with only 68 of us having braved any New Year’s Eve hangovers it was easy to find the opportunity to say a brief “Hello”. What struck me wasn’t anything he had to say – it was his size and build. I was looking eye-to-eye with him, standing just as tall and strong.
While Iwan is now 15½ stone, I’d guess he was somewhere around 13-14stone in his prime. Research on other elite 400m runners shows Matthew Hudson-Smith is 6’4” / 12st4lbs, Martin Rooney is 6’6” / 12st 11lbs, Roger Black ran at 6’3” / 12st 6lbs and Michael Johnson at 6’1” / 12st 7lbs. Those physiques are very comparable to my own. I’m 6’2” and have slimmed down over the past two years to just over 12stone and under 10% body fat. In my younger days, I was usually around 14 stone and more muscular.
I’ve been training and running consistently for the past decade and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not particularly suited to distance running. This fits with me being built more like a 400m runner. I’ve always believed everybody is capable of doing everything to a decent standard so it’s a bit galling to have to admit that perhaps you can be genetically limited. My personal bests are all similar to Iwan’s and it’s fair to say they are decent times and many runners would be happy with them. Yet they’re a long way off the best – about 50% worse than the world records and I see many runners around me who naturally run faster off less training.
Does this mean I should give up distance running? Not at all, I’m still determined to get the best out of myself. It just means I’m reconsidering my approach. If speed is where my strengths lie then I need to keep working at that. Looking back to when I started parkrunning, I had good speed but I didn’t understand how to create endurance and stamina or how to convert that speed into better parkrun times. In my pursuit of figuring this out, I got away from speed, allowing it to decay as I spent sessions logging miles and experimenting with different training systems. Now I’m going to dedicating myself to redeveloping my speed.
If you too are interested in improving your speed then contact me to purchase my Get Faster … Speed Training course.
Last Saturday, Andrew Butchart, ran the fastest parkrun of all-time clocking 13:45. Edinburgh parkrun, where he ran, describes itself as a course designed to be enjoyable, rather than for pure ‘PB’ speed!! It’s scenic, flat and run on generally wide footpaths along the promenade on the Firth of Forth. On a tough day, it’s exposed, windy and cold and looking at the photos it’s not hard to imagine how bleak it could be in the depths of winter.
Edinburgh parkrun on a blue sky day
Fortunately Butchart turned up at the height of summer with good running conditions. Putting his time into perspective, if you’re a 23min parkrunner you’re just reaching the 3K point of your parkrun and for those running 27-28mins you’re halfway round. Even a 17 minute parkrunners is still a kilometre behind as Butchart finishes. Running at 2:45/km or 4:26/mile is fast and most of us wouldn’t even beat him off the start line which shouldn’t surprise anyone given he has competed at the Olympics.
Andrew Butchart sets the record
The previous world record of 13:48 was set by Andrew Baddeley at Bushy Park in August 2012 – the week after competing in the Olympic 1,500 metres. That broke Australian Craig Mottram’s record of 14:00 which had stood since 2006.
The progression of the parkrun world record was fairly easy to track down because when Mottram set the record, Bushy Park was the only parkrun. In setting the world record in Edinburgh, Butchart becomes the first man to do so away from Bushy and the 10th to hold it.
I went back through the results and, of course, the record was initially set at the first event by Chris Owens at 18:47. Over the next year it was broken seven more times until Mottram smashed 39 seconds off to record exactly fourteen minutes in June 2006. Mottram was a world class 5,000m runner who took silver that same year at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games having won a bronze at the World Championships the year before.
In the early days at Bushy Park, where it all started, attendances were often less than 100 people and in setting the world record Mottram only finished ahead of 158 other runners. It wasn’t even a parkrun then – it was Bushy Park Time Trial. It typically attracted club runners whereas these days the bulk of 1,000+ runners turning up won’t be attached to a club. If you pick a random week from the early days you’ll find barely anyone taking longer than thirty minutes and an average time closer to twenty-three minutes. In some ways it was more competitive, especially as First Finishers were still referred to as Winners.
Among those humble beginnings we can find illustrious names such as Mo Farah logging a 15:06 in November 2005, Ireland’s World Champion Sonia O’Sullivan winning regularly as well as reducing the women’s world record twice (16:38 and 16:22). I’ve read there was a contingent of Kenyan internationals who lived near Bushy Park which included Bernard Kiptum (15:04 parkrun WR), Collins Kosgei, Johnson Kiptanui, Simon Arusei, Dennis Ndiso, and another World and Olympic champion in Vivian Cheruyiot – who held the women’s world record briefly at 17:52.
One little quirk of the early records is when David Symons set it at 16:39 in the 3rd ever parkrun event, the women’s world record was also set at 19:57 by Kate Symons. I assume they are married but may just be related.
Date
Runner
Time
Parkrun location
02-Oct-04
Chris OWENS
18:47
Bushy Park, London
16-Oct-04
David SYMONS
16:39
Bushy Park, London
06-Nov-04
David SYMONS
16:29
Bushy Park, London
27-Nov-04
Kevin QUINN
16:10
Bushy Park, London
05-Mar-05
Dermot CUMMINS
15:54
Bushy Park, London
14-May-05
Bernard KIPTUM
15:04
Bushy Park, London
17-Sep-05
Phil SLY
14:54
Bushy Park, London
01-Oct-05
Noel POLLOCK
14:39
Bushy Park, London
10-Jun-06
Craig MOTTRAM
14:00
Bushy Park, London
11-Aug-12
Andrew BADDELEY
13:48
Bushy Park, London
24-Jun-23
Andrew BUTCHART
13:45
Edinburgh, Scotland
The women’s world record progression is not so easily identified as while it was broken multiple times in the early years, once parkrun began to expand outside of London there was potential for it to be broken elsewhere. I recall Justina Heslop becoming the first woman to run sub-16 in late 2011 and as best as I can find it had always been set at Bushy Park until Hannah Walker recorded 15:55 at St Albans parkrun in July 2013. She has had the longest reign as it was 5½ years before Charlotte Arter took five seconds off at Cardiff in January 2019. She then broke her own record a year later by one second (15:49) just before the COVID-19 pandemic started.
Seasoned parkrunners will remember that events were cancelled due to COVID-19 and, when it came to reopening them, they restarted at different times around the world. Australia was one of the first countries to resume and the women’s parkrun world record went down in early 2021 as Lauren Reid ran 15:45 at Paramatta near Sydney followed seven months later by Caitlan Adams’ 15:38 at Lochiel parkrun near Adelaide.
It was quiet for a year until December 2022 produced a flurry of activity. Firstly Samantha Harrison, who finished sixth in the 2022 Commonwealth Games 10,000m final, reduced the world record to 15:37. She was only to hold on to it for three weeks as Melissa Courtney-Bryant ran 15:31 at my local parkrun in Poole on Christmas Eve. Sadly I missed this historic moment but I know it created tremendous excitement to have had a world record set there. Any week I run there I now know I have no excuses about the course.
Melissa Courtney-Bryant on the way to the best Christmas present she could ever hope for!
Yet records are set to be broken and while Melissa is still the UK record holder, the women’s WR almost immediately returned to Australia. A week later on New Year’s Eve, Isobel Batt-Doyle recorded 15:25 at Aldinga Beach near Adelaide. It was the 3rd time in a month it had been broken and she became the 14th woman to hold it.
Date
Runner
Time
Parkrun location
02-Oct-04
Rachel ROWAN
21:01
Bushy Park, London
16-Oct-04
Kate SYMONS
19:57
Bushy Park, London
11-Dec-04
Vivian CHERUIYOT
17:52
Bushy Park, London
28-May-05
Sonia O’SULLIVAN
16:38
Bushy Park, London
18-Jun-05
Sonia O’SULLIVAN
16:22
Bushy Park, London
03-Jan-09
Katrina WOOTTON
16:20
Bushy Park, London
08-May-10
Gladys CHEMWENO
16:11
Bushy Park, London
24-Nov-11
Justina HESLOP
15:58
Bushy Park, London
27-Jul-13
Hannah WALKER
15:55
St Albans, Hertfordshire
05-Jan-19
Charlotte ARTER
15:50
Cardiff
01-Feb-20
Charlotte ARTER
15:49
Cardiff
23-Jan-21
Lauren REID
15:45
Paramatta, Sydney, Australia
07-Aug-21
Caitlan ADAMS
15:38
Lochiel, Adelaide, Australia
03-Dec-22
Samantha HARRISON
15:37
Long Eaton, Derbyshire
24-Dec-22
Melissa COURTNEY-BRYANT
15:31
Poole, Dorset
31-Dec-22
Isobel BATT-DOYLE
15:25
Aldinga Beach, Adelaide, Australia
23-Dec-23
Ciara Mageean
15:13
Victoria Park, Belfast
Update: In December 2023 Ciara Mageean took another 12 seconds off the women’s world record running in Northern Ireland. It’s the last record we will officially know about as in February 2024, parkrun decided it was no longer going to keep track of male/female/age-group records on its website. With over 2,000 parkruns worldwide it’s an impossible manual task to keep track of them all – we will have to see if updates continue to filter through.
How long can you sprint? Why is the first minute of your parkrun fast? Why do we train differently for a 10K and a marathon?
Each of these questions is determined by what is going on in the body and its capacities. While the exact figure can be a touch higher or lower for you – especially depending on whether you’re well-trained or badly trained – overall they’re numbers that help structure your training. With time and focus you should be able to get a sense of exactly where your numbers are.
8-10secs Sprinting energy
Sprinting is powered by the phosphocreatine energy system, which is sometimes abbreviated to ATP-PC, or called the Anaerobic Alactic energy system. I like to call it the Sprinter’s energy system because that’s more meaningful and tells you what it does.
It produces energy quickly and allows you to move very fast but it doesn’t last long. For a distance runner, it’s useful for getting off the start line or finding a sprint finish or mid-race surge. Surprisingly it’s also the energy system you call upon when you get up off the couch to go make a cup of tea!
This is the system that kicks in when you do interval work – especially if you set off fast.
1min30 Anaerobic limitation
Beyond the sprinter’s energy system detailed above, there is a secondary anaerobic energy system. Its names include Fast Glycolysis, Anaerobic Glycolysis and Lactic Acid energy system. It’s what 400m runners use in their races and is a big contributor to the 800m.
For distance runners, they’re using it when they run intervals at the track which last within this timeframe. Being anaerobic it gets you out of breath and you find yourself puffing. This isn’t to say there isn’t some contribution from the aerobic system but for anyone with good speed, it’s mostly coming anaerobically.
For most parkrunners, you’ll see the first 1-2mins are quick and then their pace drops away. This is because they’ve mostly run on anaerobic energy and then they’re having to rely on the aerobic.
8min Running at VO2max
V02max is a scientific measure of your aerobic capacity. The body takes in oxygen through the lungs, the heart pumps the oxygen around in the bloodstream for the muscles to use. There is a limit to how much oxgyen you can transport and exercise scientists finding this out by doing treadmill tests and collecting the air their subject breathes in and out. I did a VO2max test at college and it is not a pleasant experience. It’s nice enough at the slower speeds but once you get up to speed and are beginning to exceed your VO2max, you quickly begin to accumulate oxygen debt and then you’re hanging on mentally to continue running as the treadmill pushes you. Eventually you have to stop, or I suppose you could collapse and fall off the back of the treadmill if you have the willpower to push on!
In real terms, we have the ability to run at our VO2max pace for up to eight minutes. We can go faster for shorter periods of time, we can go slower for longer. Reigning Olympic 1500m champion, Jakob Ingebrigtsen set the 2-mile world record in June 2023 at 7:54 which means he was running on his VO2max for the race. A world-class woman like Sifan Hassan has run 3,000m in 8:18; so she’s probably thereabouts.
None of this makes a lot of sense from the ordinary runner’s perspective other than to recognise that a high aerobic capacity is very helpful for good distance running. Even when you have talent it takes time to build this aerobic capacity.
12min – steady state reached
Another thing I learned at college was a phrase used by one of the physiology lecturers “it takes twelve minutes to reach steady state”. As I wasn’t a distance runner at the time or interested in physiology/biology lectures, it didn’t mean much to me. It probably doesn’t to you.
What it means in practical terms is that this is how long, on average, it takes for the body to warm-up. If you go running off down the road your legs may feel good but your breathing will struggle. You’ll settle down after a few minutes but it actually takes longer for the body to properly warm-up.
Personally I take a good 15-mins or so to reach a point where my speed has picked up and my breathing can cope. Other runners may take a little less than twelve minutes. Either way there’s two offshoots to this – firstly your quick jog down the path and back for a minute at parkrun isn’t a proper warm-up. Secondly if you’re going out for a run and it only lasts 20 minutes you’re not actually getting lots of training benefit from it. Of course this applies more to regular, committed runners who do significant volumes of training than those who only run once or twice per week.
40min – optimal production of human growth hormone
During exercise the body produces many hormones but let’s focus on human growth hormone. As the name implies this is important for repair, growth and replenishment within the body after a bout of hard exercise.
At the beginning of any run the production of this hormone begins to ramp up and at an hour it has reached its highest level at 600% of where the body started out – a sixfold increase. At forty minutes we’re already at 550% so while the next twenty minutes will raise the level higher, if you’re time pressed or out for a recovery run this is the optimal duration. You’re getting close to the maximum but in only two-thirds of the time.
Combine this with my comments above on warm-up taking twelve minutes and you can see why a run lasting at least thirty minutes is beneficial.
1hr – limit at lactate threshold
The lactate threshold is much talked about. It’s sometimes calculated as the fastest pace which you can run in an hour, something of a self-defining quantity. Once you go past the hour, the pace has to drop and you’ll be into Steady State and closer to marathon pace. While you wouldn’t train at this pace frequently or for this duration, it is worth knowing that when you’re putting together endurance training sessions, it’s good to go out for an hour.
1hr30 – glycogen depletion
If you’re training at a decent pace or you’re aerobically inefficient then you can expect your glycogen stores to run out somewhere around an hour and a half. This is why elite marathoners take on fuel during races. Even though they’re highly efficient, when they’re due to run for over two hours, their glycogen stores won’t quite be able to last them running at marathon pace for that long.
Running out of glycogen is the infamous “hitting the wall”. That usually takes place around twenty miles which fits with elite runners having stores for around 1hr40-45. Often they start a race a little slower and therefore preserve their stores.
With training the body learns to store more glycogen but to achieve that you have to get the body to deplete its stores or close to it in training. If you keep doing long runs taking gels or supping energy drinks the body has no need to learn to store more.
2hr30 to 3 hours – diminishing training returns
In their Hansons’ Marathon Method book, the Hanson discuss why long training runs lasting over three hours are not beneficial to runners. I detailed some of this in the 20-mile myth. Their point is the longer you run for, the more damage the body has to recover from. Slower marathon runners are prone to spending four hours or more on their Long Runs week after week which leaves them struggling for motivation and the body to recover. It’s best not to run too often for longer than 2hr30.
With many of these variables, training improves them. An untrained sprinter may have a ATP-PC system that only lasts a few seconds initially, like their Lactic Acid system. Distance runners can extend the time they spend at VO2max or lactate threshold pace.
Elite women run fast. We know the sprinters are very fast running under 11seconds for a 100m. On Friday June 2nd at the third Diamond League meeting of 2023, Faith Kipyegon showed she has great speed reaching 25km/hr at times. It was that speed, combined with endurance, which enabled her to become the first woman to run 1,500m in under 3:50 – a pace which would have brought her in for 4:06 for a mile.
As the reigning Olympic and World Champion, Kenya’s Kipyegon who is approaching thirty years old was heavily favoured to win in Florence, Italy. While pacemakers are still present to lead runners out in the early laps, modern athletics now has a moving set of lights around the edge of the track to help with even pacing. These had been set at 62secs per 400m which equates to a 3:52.5 time.
The blue and yellow lights indicate the required pace
I took a look at the race to see how it was run and find out how the laps broke down. Due to its distance the 1,500 metres is unusual in starting at the beginning of the back straight – which allows athletes to cover 300m followed by three laps of 400m.
The splits as best I could determine them were:
100m – 14.5secs – imagine that. How many of us can even run that from a standing start without blocks even without having to run a further 1,400m?
300m – 46s – first crossing of the finish line
400m – 1:02.37s – first lap of the track
700m – 1:48.2s – second crossing of the finish line. Just before this around the 600m mark the first pacemaker dropped out
800m – 2:04 – second lap of the track taking 61.63s. The other pacemaker drops out at 900m
1100m – 2:50 – third crossing of the finish line – one full lap to go
1200m – 3:05.28 – third lap of the track taking 61.28s. The last 100m has only taken 15-16s
1500m – 3:49.11 – a new WORLD RECORD. The final lap has taken 58.81s – a pace of 3:57/mile
It’s a truly remarkable performance which saw Britain’s Laura Muir finishing eight seconds behind in a season’s best time of 3:57.09 and Australia’s Jess Hull setting a national record in 3:57.29 as she finished third. Both runners had worked their hardest to keep up with Faith Kipyegon yet they ended up thirty metres behind. No-one in the rest of the field could even crack four minutes which begins to give an indication of the gulf that exists between Kipyegon and the others.
Faith Kipyegon flies down the back straight on her way to a new world record
Watching her run, she has decent compact form and is very balanced. Every stride is powerful and I’d estimate she’s taking around 200 steps per minute. This isn’t unusual for a middle distance runner or for a shorter runner. Faith is listed at 1.57m / 5’2” and weighs 43kg / 93lbs. What’s surprising is when you calculate the distance she’s covering with each step it works out at around 2.08m and that’s over 30% longer than she is tall. And she’s doing it for almost four minutes!
As a coach, these are the things I think about and marvel at. I’ve previously written two articles on stride length (first and second) as well as what elite runners speed is. Developing these can take time but is worthwhile even for distance runners. Consider that on average Faith Kipyegon’s new world record is the equivalent of running fifteen consecutive 100m races in 15.2secs and there are no excuses available about having little legs!
I spent a rainy bank holiday morning sprinting up a nearby hill repeatedly. It’s a key part of getting faster and one that I’ve not done since last summer. Having woken at 6am, I grabbed a bowl of cereal then did the crossword while breakfast digested. About 8:15am, I headed out the door and there was light rain falling. The session I had in mind is not big – a 15 minute warm-up run, 5 mins of drills to help the mobility, the main session of 10 hill sprints and then a ten minute warmdown. But it is time-consuming because each sprint is followed by three minutes of recovery. In the end, it took over an hour to complete. What interested me is what the session told me about how to train for distance running.
Setting off on my warm-up it took three minutes for my body to crank the pace up and reach eight minute miling. My route is a mixture of ups and downs such that, by the end of the first mile, I’d been hitting sub-6 pace on a steeper downhill stretch – 7min38 popped up on my watch. The second mile came in at 7min04 and then I tacked on another thirty seconds back to home. What surprised me was how relatively hard I was finding it. My breathing was beginning to huff and puff like I was running a parkrun and my heart-rate reached 160bpm at the end. All in all, I was glad when I finished my warm-up and could walk back round the corner to do drills.
With the rain falling steadily and knowing I’d be standing around between the hill efforts, I elected to keep the drills short. Just one repetition of each drill taking 15 seconds and then a stride back to my start position with around 30s time to recover before the next. The stride reinforces what I’m programming as well as warming the legs up for the quicker, more violent efforts up the hill. Once again, by the end of these I was puffing and my heart-rate had steadily increased to 155bpm; each subsequent effort building the heart-rate higher than the one before.
Finally I was ready. I walked to the base of the hill and then spent a few minutes chatting with an old chap about goings on. The important thing about hill sprints is to attempt them with fresh legs so I didn’t mind an extra few minutes spent conversing. Hills sprints want to get maximum effort from the muscles which is why they only last seconds and then you get a nice long recovery. The short timeframe allows your ATP-PC energy system to be the key producer of energy while the long recovery ensures it has recharged.
The first effort I sprinted up the hill and my legs were turning over so smoothly. I was barely breathing, it was how I’d feel if I was out for a jog. Then I started to walk back down the hill and the oxygen debt kicked in and within fifteen seconds my heart-rate had reached 139bpm having started down at 90bpm. The second effort felt a little harder on the breathing especially afterwards and my heart-rate reached 143bpm. By the time I’d ambled back downhill to my starting place, it was back to 114bpm and I was feeling okay. After that my heart-rate never got out into the 140s again. Sometimes the oxygen debt after each effort resulted in very quick gasps for breath yet it didn’t take long to be back to normal. As the sprints went on they got a little slower, this is unsurprising because the muscles are beginning to fatigue and they can’t power getting as far up the hill.
After my 10th and final effort, I walked down until one minute had elapsed then began a warmdown run. My legs felt like they were springing along yet the pace was barely quicker than nine minute miling.
What intrigued me about this session was how two such different ways of training – the warm-up and sprints both taxed me in different ways. The warm-up pace picked up gradually to be a little quicker than seven minute miling where I still had room to run faster. Yet it would have been hard to stay running like this for an extended period of time. By contrast the hill sprints which are an absolute blast of maximal energy felt so much easier.
According to the wisdom of heart-rate training I could have done sprints all day long as I maxed out at whereas my warm-up reached 160bpm. Yet I know that wouldn’t be a good idea – no-one would do that, neither a sprinter or distance runner. It highlights one of the problems of heart-rate training.
What really came home to me from the warm-up is that the thing limiting my distance running is not speed related. This is what I experienced when I first began parkrunning a decade and more ago. Every week I would run and feel there was more available in the tank yet not understand what was stopping me.
The limitation was not one of being able to run very fast for a short time as it is with anaerobic limitation, it was one of being able to run fast for a relatively long time. That’s where aerobic development is required. It took me the next five years to really begin unravelling this conundrum in detail. I read many books which talk about it needing to be done yet it’s not until you viscerally experience it that it becomes clear what is going on.
I meet many runners who haven’t yet had this realisation that being able to run fast 200s, 300s, 400s is not necessarily going to turn them into a faster distance runner. Sometimes it does but more often than not it’s about building speed through good distance training.
Maybe this is something I can help you with? Not everybody wants to be coached for a race, sometimes they simply need a training review. Understanding what they need to do next to get to the next level – is it speed or endurance they should work on. Just head over to the Contact page and give me some basic details and we can arrange a 1 hour consultation.
Big Red Running 