Chatty Running For Performance Runners

Colin and Anne talk about the difference between recreational and performance runners and how Chatty running is important for everyone.

Are you a recreational or performance runner?

The six mile mark of a half-marathon race is a good boundary between recreational and performance runners. At this point the recreational runner is concentrating on getting to the finish and enjoying the rest of the race.

The performance runner will probably have a race strategy and a target time. It may be their third or fourth half marathon and they know what to expect. They will be thinking about pushing on to the finish after controlling their pace to this point.

Recreational runners can go on improving by running Chatty for two to three years. Performance runners are more experienced and have probably been running for several years. They will probably be adding a couple of faster sessions in the week in order to maintain their improvement. But Chatty running is still vitally important for these runners in two ways.

Base phase

All endurance runners need to train their aerobic system to maximise the use of oxygen. This is the main energy system that is used in any event over 800m. Twelve weeks of Chatty Sparkly running should be a key part of their training in the build up to a target race.

Building on the base

After the base phase, a Chatty Sparkly performance runner, following the Lydiard approach, would add a few weeks of hills, then anaerobic work followed by integration and tapering.

Performance runners following the tower or tube training approach will be trying to do everything at the same time. A long run, hill session, tempo paced runs and intervals over several weeks.

Chatty Running will play an important part in both approaches. Wherever it says ‘easy’ on a training plan this means a Chatty run and we mean Chatty! Many performance runners will run too fast on these days mistaking ‘breathy’ pace for Chatty pace. Click here to find out what Chatty pace should feel like.

Keep easy runs Chatty

Easy, Chatty paced runs are recovery runs for performance runners. This is vitally important because it’s in the recovery that the training effect happens. Run them ‘breathy’ and the whole training programme is jeopardised.

For more about recovery for recreational and performance runners watch our next two videos. Coming soon!