Pat Logan wasn't just my first running coach; he was my first running hero. I was a 103-pound freshman on the La Canada High School cross country team. Logan was a 6-foot, 190-pound warrior who led every training run, start to finish, and then afterward dragged us into the weight room, where he'd rip out sets of bench press at 225 pounds.

Man, how I wanted to be like Coach Logan! I'd lift furiously for 30 minutes. Dips, pull-ups, leg presses, crunches, curls. And never got bigger. Never came close to pressing 225 pounds off my chest.

You see, building a weightlifting body demands targeting specific muscles with correct exercises, reps, resistance and recovery. I was trying to fake my way to bulging muscles through sheer volume. Pretty dumb, huh?

Most masters runners are like that 14-year-old kid in the weight room. We try to fake our way to PRs and fitness through high mileage and hard pace work, when we should be building our running bodes.

TRICKLE-DOWN TRAINING

I've rarely met a masters runner who couldn't turn any workout into a distance run. Tempo, intervals, hill repeats? All can be improved with a few miles before the workout, right? And a few after. And nonstop jogging between reps. "What's your mileage?" isn't just our communal greeting, it's a training philosophy.

We're to be forgiven. Most masters are products of the 1970s running boom, when our sport exploded into a fitness movement 25 million members strong. We didn't know squat about tempo, VO2 max, or motor unit recruitment, but we did know that our sport's stars--Shorter and Rodgers and Pre--ran oodles of miles. So we did, too.

To this day, many of us believe that if we log enough miles, fitness will trickle down, magically conferring endurance, speed and race readiness. Pretty dumb, huh?

BUILD YOUR RUNNING BODY

Just as weightlifters target muscle groups, we runners need to target the individual components of our running body. Specificity in training, not some generic quantity of "mileage" and "speed work," is the key to running fitness. This is especially true for masters, who are years removed from youth and the all-around benefits of playground sports that once masked the holes in our training.

Some of our running components are easy to identify: muscles, nerves, hormones and the circulatory system. Some are more elusive, like mental toughness and pace efficiency.

Once a component is identified, we target it with a specific workout (activity, effort, duration, recovery). Our goal is maximum improvement with minimum exertion.

BUILD YOUR RUNNING MUSCLES

As an example, let's say we want to strengthen our running muscles. Our muscles can be broken down into three fiber types:

Slow-twitch: associated with long-distance endurance.

Intermediate fast-twitch: associated with middle-distance endurance and speed.

Fast-twitch: associated with top sprint speed and strength.

We recruit our fiber types in a "ladder." We use slow-twitch first, then add intermediate and fast-twitch as our effort (force requirement) or fatigue increases. To train all our fibers through distance running requires long runs of 2–3 hours. However, since we must exhaust slow-twitch fibers before recruiting intermediate and fast-twitch, this approach limits us to one "rep" of work. Moreover, it leaves our slow-twitch fibers drained for the next day's run. Instead, we should target the fibers individually.

SLOW-TWITCH FIBER: These fibers derive maximum benefit from low-intensity distance runs. But "distance" refers to duration, not mileage. Slowing down a brisk 60-minute run to a more leisurely 70 minutes increases the training benefit by 10 minutes! Kenyans are famous for running 8:00 mile pace on distance runs. Masters runners are notorious for going much faster.

INTERMEDIATE FIBER: Rather than exhaust slow-twitch fibers as a means of recruiting intermediate fibers, we should increase our workout's force requirement. Running 60-to 90-second repeats up a moderately steep hill (four to eight reps at 3K race effort, with a 4-to 5-minute walk/jog recovery) works intermediate fibers to the maximum.

FAST-TWITCH FIBER: Steep hill sprints instantly force fast-twitch fibers into action, while leaving our energy stores relatively untouched (the better to run distance the next day). Six to 10 reps of 40-60 meters (90 to 95 percent effort, 2-to 3-minute walk recovery) give these fibers all they can handle.

Of course, there are many components besides muscles to target--some, like mitochondria and capillaries, within the muscles themselves. But by isolating each component, two things happen: We train the component to 100 percent of its potential, and we don't waste energy overtraining our entire body in hopes of achieving the same effect.

Building our running bodies requires both a plan and the discipline to carry it out. But hey, if bodybuilders can do it, so can we. And mileage junkies take heart; we even end up with pretty good volume. It's just that this way every mile counts.

Pete Magill holds two American age-group records and is the oldest American to break 15:00 for 5K, having run 14:45 a few months before his 50th birthday.

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