Two Legitimate Excuses Sprinters Can Use to Get Out of Running Distance

A few weeks back, my friend Angie proposed that a group of us do the Leprechaun Run here in Philly this past Saturday.

Without really digging into the race description -- aside from noticing that the proceeds benefited the Special Olympics -- I agreed. I saw a "5" and assumed it was a 5K.

I was wrong. A couple days before the race, as I was filling in my entry form, I noticed that, in fact, the race was five MILES -- not kilometers -- long. Oops? Considering my longest cardio session since I've gotten back into fitness has lasted 23 minutes (and 37 seconds), I found this bit of info quite alarming.

But the other option was a two-mile walk and, well, there was pride to consider. I mean, I could run five miles if I wanted to ... I've just never wanted to before. Right? And anyway, wasn't I supposed to be building up my aerobic base?

I think it's worth noting here that Stubot (of Pull-Up Challenge "fame") declined the race invite, replying "Distance running isn't really appropriate rugby training, so I don't want to weigh myself down with the wrong muscle fibers. I don't even know what that means, actually."

Ah, prescient Stubot.

While I slogged through the race in just under an hour, in the future I will arm myself with one of the following two excuses. I mean reasons. OK, excuses -- but they're good ones.

Legitimate Excuse No. 1: Sprinters don't need to build an aerobic base.

Literally the day after I sent in my race form, Vern Gambetta, director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems, blogged about the notion of "Building an Aerobic Base" as it relates to sprinters.

There, the pretense I'd been laboring under mocked me. His first sentence sums it up: "For some strange reason, the myth that you must build an aerobic base for sprinting still lives."

Hold up -- that's a myth?! That myth is the only reason I signed up to do five miles. (That, and to benefit the Special Olympics, of course.)

It was my understanding that I was still in base-building mode, which all types of athletes have to muster through at the beginning of a program, and that later I'd be able to switch over to more fast-twitch-focused workouts.

But no. To drive the point home, later that same day Gambetta posted "More on 'Aerobic Base,'" with detailed support from Jack Blatherwick, PhD, the conditioning coach for the NHL's Washington Capitals (not to mention former conditioning coach for the U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey team, including the 1980 "Miracle Team").

Five highlights of Blatherwick's argument:

> For sprinters, of course the most important base would be speed -- in concert with strength and power. It is a waste of time -- and perhaps counterproductive -- to train with long slow distances. Aerobic/cardiovascular fitness is essential for all young athletes, of course. The important question is how to acquire it.

> Regarding team sports that require skill and athleticism, the mistake made by many fitness coaches is to "compartmentalize" the training into separate workouts -- aerobic endurance, anaerobic power, anaerobic endurance, skill, agility, strength, etc. etc. etc. Of course in a game, all of these attributes are required at the same time, so we should be looking for more ways to incorporate the various elements into "integrated workouts."

> ... anaerobic interval training is highly aerobic, and can be a more intense cardiovascular workout than what fitness gurus would call a "cardio" workout. College hockey players doing six weeks of dryland training composed of "anaerobic intervals" for quickness and power made greater gains in aerobic and cardiovascular measures than if they had trained with aerobic distances for the same period

> There is a neuromuscular consequence for everything we do -- including endurance workouts. This means we are forming habits at all times -- physiological habits that might be very difficult to break.

> ... it is obvious we should rethink our compartmentalized approach and add "overspeed practice." This means pushing the team out of their present comfort zone -- to perform skills and make read-react decisions at a faster pace, using appropriate intervals. Then, as the training season progresses, increase the length of the intervals and total length of the overspeed practice. This approach certainly does not include long, slow distances, because "slow" is not part of the mission.

Legitimate Excuse No. 2: Doing nothing assists recovery just as much as doing "active recovery" (often a clever name for a long, slow run).

It might be a stretch, but there is at least some data to support this statement. As long as you are part of a small, elite population of athletes, that is (specifically, a young, female, elite soccer player). But sometimes, I think research is about hearing what you want to hear. (Hellooooo, placebo.)

Bryan Chung, MD, founder of the blog Evidence-Based Fitness, dissected the 2008 study "Neuromuscular fatigue and recovery in elite female soccer: Effects of active recovery" from the journal Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise in his recent post "Rest vs. Active Recovery." (Active recovery is performing submaximal exercise to promote recovery from intense training sessions/games.)

The study compared the recovery times of two groups of soccer players who played two games, 72 hours apart -- one group did active recovery, and the other recovered passively.

Turns out the researchers didn't find a bit of difference between the two groups.

While Chung noted plenty of flaws in the study, his bottom line was "... you can probably do whatever you like best, whether it's sitting on the couch, or getting some active recovery in, feeling relatively assured that it's probably not going to hurt you. [C]ertainly, this study draws attention to question whether active recovery, though theoretically sound, is actually any more beneficial than passive recovery."

Yes! I've always despised -- and skipped, in large part -- the 30-minute "recovery run" the day after rugby games. (I really hope Martha Daines isn't reading this post.)

And now, happily, I will continue to do so. If you take issue with that, see Excuse No. 1.