Mark: All right, it is time to get my run on for today. I've got a killer tempo run
plan. I'm trying to hit 3 minutes 30 per kilometer, although I'm going to try and negative split
that. I'm trying to hit 180 SPM and really work on my form trying to hit that mid-foot
and really improve my running index. That's provided, of course, I don't bonk. Hang on
here. If you're new to the running world, you might be thinking, "What on earth is he
on about?" Well, fear not, because here is our running jargon buster.
[music] Heather: Let's start with tempo and threshold.
These are often a staple of many runners training programs as they're a great way for boosting
your fitness, but there can be a little bit of a confusion between the difference in a
tempo run and a threshold run. Well, they're often regarded as the same thing. It's basically
going to be running at the pace at which you could sustain if you went all out for 60 minutes.
That's going to fall somewhere between your 10K race pace and your half marathon pace.
Mark: Then, the build run. I mean, it's not too dissimilar, actually. It still hits the
same fitness zones, but as the name suggests you build into it. For instance, you'd start
off at a nice, steady pace and build up to something like 10K pace over the course of
20 minutes. The nice thing with this is it is a nice introduction to those tempo and
threshold workouts. [music]
Heather: What about minutes per mile or minutes per kilometer, then?
Mark: Well, this one often gets people, but in simple terms, it is your pace. How many
minutes it takes you to cover a mile, for minutes per mile, or how many minutes it takes
you to cover a kilometer, for minutes per kilometer. Personally speaking, I'm a minutes
per kilometer person and minutes per mile totally confuses me.
[music] Heather: This, then, leads us on to KPH or
kilometers per hour. That's the metric you'll usually see displayed if you're running on
treadmills. So, 12kph basically means you're running at 12 kilometers an hour, but do always
check as to whether it's kilometers per hour or miles per hour.
Mark: What about SPM? Heather: That's a good one. SPM stands for
either strides per minute or steps per minute. It's the same thing. It's basically your cadence,
which is the amount of times that your legs move in a minute. You'll expect the elites
to be up at around 180SPM, but don't have a panic if you've seen a number on your watch
that is less than half of that because some devices actually just record how many times
one of your legs moves in each minute. [music]
Mark: Who has heard of the park run? Honestly, these are amazing. In short, they're just
a free 5k taking place all around the world in various towns and cities, normally starting
at 9:00 AM every Saturday and they have a great community feel. If you want official
results and place, then you just need to register on the parkrun website, print off a barcode.
Otherwise, just turn up and have fun. Heather: Have the terms 'easy run', 'jog',
'steady run' confused you yet? Because they're often interchangeable and can sound a little
confusing, but basically, yet again, they are pretty much the same thing. Often, as
someone says they're going for a jog, well, that can refer to a really easy run, but then
a steady run is the same as an easy run as well. Unless it's otherwise stated, presume
that a run is a run and it should be conversational and it should be easy.
[music] Mark: Right. Well, what are intervals, then?
Heather: This is normally some form of quality within a run. It's broken into intervals,
also known as reps or efforts, where it's going to be short stints of working at a high-end
pace. It could be, for example, four lots of 1K running at your 10K pace, and the emphasis
on these intervals is very much really focusing on quality and form, and then going very easy
in the recovery in between. Mark: Sort of like a fartlek session, although
less structured. I mean, fartlek is actually a Swedish term meaning speed play. It involves
varying your pace or speed between hard efforts and easy efforts, but rather than doing it
by a set distance or time, as you would with interval training, you just go by feel, which
makes it a perfect session for beginners. [music]
Heather: How about the last on this one, bonking? It's actually a commonly used term in the
endurance world and it means hitting the wall. Running out of gas, out of energy, basically
fully depleting your body and you're going to struggle to go much further. It's one we
certainly want to avoid. Mark: Overpronation. Now, this is something
I do and it's a type of motion that some of us make with our foot when we roll through
either walking or running. Overpronation is when our ankle falls or drops inwards, supination
is when we actually roll through on the outside edge of our foot, and then neutral is when
we walk or run naturally with no side to side movement of our foot. It's really important
you know this, particularly so when you're buying a set of running shoes.
[music] Heather: A continuation of that is how our
foot lags and it's broken into three different categories. You've got forefoot runners who
land on the very front of their foot, you've got midfoot runners who land on the ball of
their feet, and then you have heel strikers. That's when the heel hits the ground first.
The majority of runners tend to fall into the brackets of either being a midfoot or
a heel striker. [music]
Mark: Oh, and that negative split I was talking about earlier, well, that is when you go faster
in the second half of an interval or run, which is obviously quite hard given that you're
fatigued in that second half, but a great training tool.
Heather: Drills and strides are usually used ahead of a hard run session or a race. They're
a great way to making sure your body is tuned up and ready to go. Drills tend to be slower
and more controlled, concentrating on reiterating that really good running form and strides
are more of an acceleration. You're running short stretches at a much faster pace than
your race pace in a way to get your legs woken up and feeling really good ahead of the hard
efforts to come. Mark: I often see athletes doing these drills
and strides before a track session. Now, a track session is a session performed on an
athletics track. Often, we'll see athletes doing what we call a speed session on the
track, a session that really focuses on that top-end speed over short intervals.
[music] Heather: Let's not forget the long run. This
is another staple part of many runner's training weeks and it's about building that aerobic
endurance. It's time spent on feet and as a result of that, it's usually done at a very
easy pace and you'll find it will be the longest training session of the week for runners,
and in some cases, it can actually exceed an hour in length.
[music] Mark: Well, that is a lot already. Let's pick
the pace up here. GPS stands for global positioning system. You'll find this built into a lot
of watches like this one. It allows you to track things like your pace, your speed, and
your distance. Heart rate. Well, I probably don't need to explain this one to you. The
higher it is, the harder you're working or the more strain on your body. This can be
used nicely in conjunction with your pace, so you know what zone you're working in. Now,
we normally use five zones for running, one being the easiest, five being the hardest.
Although these are entirely personal and differ from person to person and do change as your
fitness changes, but if you're really looking to improve your performance, then keeping
a track of your zones can be very useful. [music]
Mark: We can use the zones to prevent us from overdoing it, what we call overtraining. Essentially,
when we're putting too much stress on the body without enough recovery. We normally
see our performance plateau and then eventually start to decline. That's where the taper comes
in. It's a form of recovery, often done prior to a race, an opportunity for the body to
recover from all the hard work it's done so that you're feeling fresh and ready for the
race, but including some race-specific workout, so you are really firing and ready to go.
[music] Mark: PB stands for personal best, PR stands
for personal record, basically, the same thing, your best time over a set distance. CR stands
for course record and something you might see pop up in Strava. What is Strava? Well,
it's a popular app used for running and recording your running and within that, they have something
called segments. When you pass through one of these segments when you're running, it
records your time from start to finish, and you may find yourself with a course record.
Finally, DNF stands for did not finish, I don't think that needs much more explanation,
and DNS sadly means did not start. Heather: Gosh, I think that has made me realize
just how many running phrases there are and we've only scratched the surface. I can think
of so many more, but hopefully, that has clarified a few things with some words or phrases you
might've heard that you didn't quite know what they meant. If you've still got any questions
or queries about this or other phrases that you've heard, do let us know in the comments
section below and we'll do our best to help out. Hopefully, you've enjoyed this video.
Give us a like and check out all of our social media channels and give those a follow, too.
[00:09:22] [END OF AUDIO]