Video of the Week: Are You Ready?

There is a ‘blogumentary’ called ChasingKimbia that chronicles the training life of a group of elite runners as they prepare for the big marathons: Boston, New York. Much of the footage is on YouTube.

As I watched this clip I was also struck by their form. When I see pictures of me running my feet never seem to be more than a couple of inches from the ground. Check out these guys: their back foot is parallel with the ground and they look like gazelles.

In addition to providing some great footage of fast runners with fantastic form the site has some interesting advice. I liked this little snippet:

It’s interesting that these guys consider a hard 15K run speed training. Most of us consider speed training short intervals on the track. In fact, someone emailed me yesterday asking, “Will the guys do any fast track intervals, like 800’s, before the race?” Hard 800-meter repeats make a great VO2 Max workout, but VO2 Max has very little benefit for the marathon. It’s not specific to the race. Dieter revolves all of his training around 3:00/kilometer pace - roughly 2:06 marathon pace. “The marathon involves running for two hours non-stop. In training you need to mimic these race conditions. So, the best way to do that is with hard continuous running.”

So how about it, runners—do you have a long run scheduled this weekend? Try picking up the pace a little! According to ChasingKimbia, it will do you good.