5 Tips for Novice Trail Runners
Over the last few years, trail running has had a meteoric rise in popularity. From a fringe sport for a small section of the outdoors-loving fitness community, with events that had a few hundred participants at most, to now being a widespread activity where races sell out in hours and attract thousands. There’s no denying this the once daggy pastime has entered the realms of being ‘cool’. With this growth has come a large portion of people with little or no experience of running, let alone the more technical world of the trail scene. So to help guide you on your off-road journey, here’s a few key tips that you can implement into you weekly training regime.
Stair Running
In a lot of trail races you’ll find yourself going up and down plenty of stairs. Australian events are renowned for them, particularly anything in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. So, to help prepare your pins for the specific movement and impact of steps, it’s wise to include a weekly stair session into the plan. Not only will it be good for conditioning, but stair sessions can help develop power and good biomechanics. You don’t need a massive set of steps to make it work either. A climb of 20 or so is ample and start by going up and down them for 5 minutes. Take one step at a time for the first couple weeks and as you get stronger you can commence ‘double-stepping’. After a few weeks, increase it to two sets of 5 minutes with a few minutes recovery between.
Speed Work
While your race pace might not be fast, it pays to do some speed sessions in training. Not only will it build your engine and improve your running economy, but it will help you feel more relaxed at faster paces when doing events. For simple weekly workout, jog for 15 minutes as a warmup, do 5 minutes of stretching, then do 6 x 2-minute efforts with a 1-minute walk recovery. The speed of the repeats should be around your 5km race pace. If you don’t know what that is, then you could aim for a heart rate approximately 80% of your maximum. For those without a heart rate monitor, run at a consistent, hard effort that you can maintain throughout the whole workout without fading in the last 15 seconds of each interval. You want to finish the entire session feeling tired, but knowing you could have done a couple more reps if you needed.
Spend Time on Trails
This one might sound obvious, but it’s important that you hit the trails as much as possible. You don’t have to dedicate your entire runs to being on the dirt. Even small sections of trail running through local parks is going to be beneficial because it develops stability, particularly in ankles, and gets you comfortable on uneven surfaces. For those living in the city it can be hard to find a lengthy trail, but as mentioned a moment ago, anything is worthwhile, but you can also look for routes with lots of short flights of stairs, as this too is a good trail simulation.
Hill Repeats
As horrible as inclines can feel, hills reps are your friend. They improve your power, VO2 max, mechanics and quad conditioning. Personally, I prefer newcomers to the sport to do repeats of short, steep hills (Approx 30 seconds) as opposed to longer ones. The punchy climbs are ideal not only because they’re mentally more manageable, but when you’re new to this stuff, short hills are more achievable with good technique. A simple session of 8-10 x 30sec hill reps is going to work your engine and load your legs enough, without beating you up so much you can’t train the following day.
Train Your Guts
It’s important that you practice fuelling in training. Not only does it get you conditioned to carrying nutrition and consuming it on the go, it helps you learn what will work for you on event day. No two gels or fuel sources are ever the same, and everyone reacts differently to what they eat. One brand of gel might make you need a bathroom, while another can cause nausea. For this reason, you need to try different things so that you can work out what you can comfortably consume. Eating while training is also good for your recovery too, as it means you don’t complete the training depleted. The goal is to be able to get at least 60-80g of carbs in per hour. It can take time to train yourself to be able to digest food while your body is under stress, so start with less and progressively up the intake over a few months. Elite trail runners can get 100g or more in per hour.