Training On Trails While Racing On Roads

Audio Transcript

Claire: Hello. I’m happy to take you through today’s show and today’s question comes from Tom.

Tom: Hi. I’m a 55-year-old training for a June marathon that will be run primarily on asphalt biking trail. I usually do my long runs on trails because it’s easier to recover, and it’s also more enjoyable. How much running on pavements or other hard surfaces would you suggest in order to adequately prepare for a marathon on that surface? Thanks.

Claire: I love this question Tom, because I live in an area that has amazing trails, and it is truly a restorative experience to go run in nature, get away from it all, and not have to worry about cars. You can listen to the birds and enjoy the scenery.

It’s a totally different experience being on trails than it is going out on the roads. As you mentioned Tom, some people feel that the softer surface of a trail is gentler on your body and will cause less wear and tear than the constant pounding on asphalt. While this is partially true, the biggest physical benefit to trail running is that it slows you down.

You simply cannot run over rocks, and roots, uphill and downhill on uneven trail, as fast as you can on smooth asphalt. Slowing down your running, on your easy days is absolutely critically to be able to keep a good volume of miles up, without adding the need for extra recovery time for your easy runs.

We often find it’s harder for most athletes to go slow than it is to run fast. Some of that has to do with the fact that it feels good to run right in that easy zone; that gray zone that’s not really too hard but not really super easy.

It’s a nice stroll, and it feels good to go with the middle of your ability.

You’re not getting the most benefit when you run too fast to be easy but yet not hard enough to challenge yourself. That’s why we’re always talking about slowing down.

No easy run is too easy, and the trails are perfect for that. Go ahead and run those easy runs on the trail even though you are training for a road marathon.

Another benefit of trail running is that you are forced to work your ancillary support muscles because not only are you moving forward, you’re moving side to side, up and down, and sometimes diagonally. For me it’s sometimes backwards, and sometimes crawling up on my hands.

This is all really great work for developing stable and strong support muscles that will transfer to the road and make you stronger, and faster. This will also help with your endurance but there can be too much of a good thing.

One of the most important aspects that you should incorporate into any kind of training program is specificity.

That means that you need to train for what you are racing for. If you’re training on roads, you have to run on roads but it doesn’t mean that you have run on roads all the time.

Let’s think about roads for a while. It actually has some benefits. First of all, it’s convenient. You can go out of your door and run on the road and come back.

It takes a lot less time, especially if you have to drive to a trail and drive back.

The other obvious thing about road running, is that it’s a smooth surface. You don’t have to constantly stare down at the road, worrying about tripping for the most part.

Slipping and falling on the road is unlikely to happen. Even if it were to happen, it’s not quite as hazardous as going on the trail.

Another often overlooked point is that some of that pounding on the hard surfaces is actually good for you.

High impact exercises, when done safely, have been shown to increase bone density. A little bit of that jumping up and down makes your bones grow a little bit denser which is good for keeping fractures away.

But you want to make sure that you’re doing it to your body’s ability.

This goes back to your question, Tom, of how much road running you need to do, if you’d prefer to be on the trails. The very short answer to this question is hard on hard and easy on easy.

What does that mean? It means your hard workouts, your temple runs, your marathon pace runs, your speed works, should be done on a hard surface, not necessarily flat.

If you have a road race that has hills, you want to incorporate hills into some of those runs as well, but you want to do your marathon specific runs on your marathon specific surface.

For your easy days, you can go to the trails, climb a mountain, and do some of those easy runs. I’m not necessarily recommending that you do the super technical hard stuff because that will be increased effort, but get your leisurely relaxing beautiful runs out in the beautiful scenery and that’s perfectly fine.

You want to start off those road runs gradually. I recommend that you run on the roads at least once a week but you can increase that over a period of few weeks, but definitely, once a week if not a couple of times a week.

Workouts should be on the roads. A good to way to do that is to find a trail that connects to the road. You can do your warm up on a trail, get a nice, happy, relaxed warm up at a really easy pace, and then move on to the road for your actual workout. You can then head back to the trail for your cool down, and that way you’re still getting the meat of your workout on the surface that you’re going to be racing on.

You get all of the warm up and the cool down, basically all the benefits of the trail. You’ll get that on your easy sections of your runs.

You also need to consider how much your body can take. If it gets to be too much, dial it back a little bit. You certainly need to be on the road if you’re running a road race, but it doesn’t have to be every single run, and it doesn’t have to be five times a week. It just needs to be enough so that your body gets used to that surface and dial it back.

Another thing that people who run both trail and roads is, they get different shoes. Consider doing the same. Get some trail shoes for your train runs.

Then if you don’t like asphalt surfaces so much, you might want to go to your local running shop and talk to them about something that provides a little bit extra cushion, a little bit more support so you don’t feel the asphalt as badly as you would in a minimally supported shoe.

There all kind of shoes out there for road runners, and trail runners. I definitely recommend you switch up your shoes, and make sure that you have something that feels relatively good on asphalt, so it is not such a slog to be on the road when you need to.

In general, all surfaces, whether it is the track, trail, asphalt, concrete, or grass, have their benefits and their drawbacks.

The best way to become the most well rounded runner is try out them all. Get a little bit of trail in every week, and get a little bit of road in every week.

A little bit of everything will expose your body to different stimulus and will prepare you for all sorts of surfaces.

I hope that answered your question, Tom. Thank you so much for asking. Again, for those of you listening that want to have your question answered by one Runners Connect coaches, head on over to RunnersConnect.net/daily and click the record button to send your question over.

We’ll use it in one of our future episodes. If you are looking to take your running to the next level and get your own custom training plan with an amazing supportive team, go to RunnersConnect.net/train to start your free two week trial.

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