Autumn Marathon

Train less, go faster!

…is the motto of NYC Endurance, whose regular class/workout I joined for the first time Tuesday evening. The group’s approach is to combine a holistic, functional fitness regimen like CrossFit with limited, targeted endurance workouts in order to prepare an athlete to excel in marathons, triathalons and even ultras. The endurance workouts, no more than three per week, include sprints, longer intervals and tempo runs of not longer than 90 minutes.

Tuesday’s workout consisted of six 200m sprints with 90 seconds rest between them.  In aggregate, that’s six minutes of work broken up by ten minutes of rest.  When Brian, the NYC Endurance Coach described the workout, I wondered why I had bothered riding the subway all the way from Brooklyn just to exercise for 15 minutes! As it happened, most of the hour was occupied with drills to reinforce proper running technique. CrossFit endurance advocates rapid stride cadence, striking the ground with your forefoot, and leaning forward to maximize straight-ahead propulsion. You never think that you to study how to run, yet it turns out to be hard work.

My own training log for the first part of the year reveals mileage of not more than 11 or 12 miles per week which most of my running friends would consider crazy for someone preparing for a couple half marathons in the spring and the NYC Marathon in November. There are also tough CrossFit workouts which I have been doing 3-4 times/week. Results so far have been mixed: generally, my running times are slower than when I was running 35 miles/week two years ago. However, there have been some promising races and I haven’t yet completely absorbed the new technique.