CGH #047: 800 Meters To 100 Miles

The podcast “Consumer’s Guide To Health” returned to the airwaves in January. This biweekly podcast and live stream airs on BlogTalkRadio every second Thursday at 11:00am central time. Join the discussion!

Episode 47 is entitled “800 Meters To 100 Miles”.

Running, as but one endurance sport example, has a social and coaching culture that would have you believe that very diverse methods are required to train for different events. Running events upward of 100 miles now exist.Most coaches and athletes would assume that training for the 800 meters on the track would be in complete opposition to training for a 100 mile trail run. One is 200 times longer than the other.

The currently-held beliefs in the running community – and the traditional training methods employed by most - make some faulty assumptions. This session discusses training principles, and how they apply to both ends of the running (and endurance sports) spectrum.

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Episode 47 Notes: 800 Meters To 100 Miles

Welcome to the Smart Life Project's "Consumer's Guide To Health" for July 5, 2012. I'm your host, Allan Besselink, coming to you live from Austin, Texas (as I do every other Thursday at 11:00 am central time). This show is brought to you by the Smart Life Project, a health initiative based in Austin, Texas committed to providing sports science solutions for training, rehab, and life. Life is a sport - play smart.

Becoming a consumer of your own health and health care is critical in this day and age. The health care and fitness worlds can be a challenge to negotiate. But we are also in an era of accessibility to information, and as I always say, knowledge is power - if only we'd use it. Let's face it though - the inability to challenge our belief systems in the face of good scientific evidence is the primary limiting factor in the advancement of both health care and coaching, as well as human performance and injury prevention. And as I always say - don't shoot the messenger.

The primary goal of this show is to increase awareness of these issues so that people can become better consumers of their own health - from the grass roots level on up.

With that in mind, our call in number is (347) 843-4753.

Today's episode 47 is entitled "800 Meters To 100 Miles".

The Summer Olympics are upon us, and with that we will be exposed to a wide variety of running events - as short as 100 meters, and as long as the marathon. But those in the running community know that runners don't just stop at the marathon distance any more - they go far beyond this. Events upwards of 100 miles now exist, with a fine example being the Western States 100 Mile endurance run that was held just a couple of weeks ago.

Historically, running has a social and coaching culture that would have you believe that very diverse methods are required to train for different events. For example, most would assume that training for the 800 meters on the track would be in complete opposition to training for a 100 mile trail run. One is 200 times longer than the other.

If you go online and search for training programs for these diverse distances, you will find some very different results. The currently-held beliefs in the running community would tell us that these events utilize different “energy systems”, that one event is anaerobic while the other is aerobic, that one event is for those with lots of fast twitch muscle fibers while the other is only for those with a predominance of slow twitch fibers, that perhaps a specific periodization or structure of training is required, or even more commonly, that perhaps a certain number of miles of training are necessary.

These traditional methods make some faulty assumptions.

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Photo credits: joehardy