Running Longer Slower And The Demise Of The Track Club

It seems like there is a stigma attached to running fast.

In the world of running as we know it today, there is a huge trend towards running a marathon. It might even be your first running event, and for many, their last. The number of marathon participants in this country has skyrocketed. This became even more readily apparent this past weekend when I attended the San Antonio Marathon as a spectator. Marathon training is now a social phenomenon.

In the meantime, the average marathon time is at least 30 minutes slower now than a decade ago. The average time for men is now 4:32; for women, 5:06. Injury rates reported in the literature vary from 60 to 90% of all marathon runners. So now the end result is that we have a lot of people running marathons, slowly, getting injured in the process, and perhaps not even running again.

Running longer slower has become the motto of the running community. Whatever happened to running fast? Perhaps it disappeared with the demise of the track club.

First of all, there is no “gold standard” for “fast”. When I use the word “fast”, I mean “fast – relative to the individual”.

There was a time not so long ago when runners used to be involved in track clubs. They used to spend time on the track, doing running drills, working on their running mechanics, and pushing their pace via interval training. It was all about running fast – not running long. They built their power output. They became better runners, and then they built progressively towards a goal, typically a 5K for starters.

There have always been significant benefits to running faster. Running mechanics tend to improve as running speed increases. I have yet to see an athlete run better mechanically when they slowed down. That has been my observation for 5:00 per mile runners, and for 12:00 per mile runners. There is a growing body of scientific evidence to indicate that interval training is highly effective in building running capacity, both neuromuscular and cardiovascular.

As marathon training groups have grown, I think it is safe to say that the focus of the running community has moved away from the track club and towards the long run group. Whatever happened to running in a track club environment? Sadly, it appears to have gone extinct.

I would suggest that some of the problems that the running community now experiences – high injury rates, burnout, and overall slower running paces – are secondary to the demise of the track club and the desire to simply run longer slower.

Perhaps the long-term solution is to run faster, train faster, and build methodically through a series of shorter events. Perhaps the long-term solution is to build towards a longer event over time as running becomes more about “active lifestyle” and less about “bucket list”.

The solution is to run shorter faster in order to run longer slower.

This is the mission of the RunSmart Track Club, an Austin-based club that is now actively recruiting runners of all ages to focus on events shorter than 10K. The return of the community-based track club is upon us – to build better runners of all paces and experience levels.  

Photo credits: nchenga