Running Workouts To Build Muscular Endurance

Whether you race over 5km or a marathon the primary focus of a high percentage of your running workouts is often endurance training due to the highly aerobic nature of these events.

If you can improve your endurance you have the potential to perform better in your races by having a solid training base developed through base training and maintained during race periods.

Many runners simply get used to running at one set pace when they head out on the road or trails. This workout will encourage runners to get out of such a habit and give themselves the ability to improve their injection of pace while training.

For this workout- steady state pace refers to the pace a beginner would run regularly in training. For many this tends to be around their 10 mile race pace.

Be aware when performing interval training when running as it will place additional strain on your body and intensive interval sessions should only be performed at most during two run sessions within a training week and adequate recovery should be incorporated before and after intensive workouts.

As races are very rarely run on flat courses, change of pace intervals provide a more race scenario specific workout for a runner and prepares the body for the potential terrain and race scenarios they may come across whether they're running a 5km race or a marathon.

Sometimes it's difficult to judge how hard to run. The RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion) Scale gives some direction to your running and how hard you exercise to ensure you're working at the right intensity.

10 Point Scale of RPE

• 0 - Nothing at all (at rest)

• 1 - Very light exercise level

• 2 - Fairly light exercise level

• 3 - Moderate exercise level

• 4 - Somewhat hard exercise level

• 5 - Hard exercise level

• 6 - Difficult/ hard exercise level

• 7 - Very hard exercise level

• 8 - Harder

• 9 - Even harder

• 10 - Very, very hard

The above workout is a great introduction to change of pace interval training for beginners. For further progression for beginners the workout can be adapted by increasing the work rate during the faster intervals if the runner is targeting shorter races.

Or if the athlete is targeting marathon or distance events the 10 km race pace intervals can be extended over the course of longer training runs

Advanced muscular endurance workouts can be used to further develop the ability of racers to cope with changes of pace and work-rate requirements. Whether it's a steep climb in a race or having to respond to a fellow competitors increase in pace.

The need for such challenges in your training is that no two running routes are the same. Aspects of a course such as it's geographical nature with hills or trails, and wind resistance mean that a race isn't run like a run on a treadmill.

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Did this article help you? Do you feel the workouts work?

Many Thanks

Liam Hallam (CyclingFitness on Hubpages)