Jay Johnson currently serves as the Middle Distance Coach for the University of Colorado, his alma mater, where he has coached for more than five years. In addition to his coaching responsibilities, Coach Jay directs the Boulder Running Camp, one of the premier high school running camps in the country, and develops training materials for athletes and coaches of all ages and levels.

Each week, Jay will be answering the best training questions we receive from you! If you have a question you want answered, email CoachJay@nike.com, and stay tuned to next week’s “Q&A with Coach Jay”!

*Coach Jay’s advice is provided as general training information. Use at your own risk. Always consult with your own heath care provider for questions relating to your specific training and nutrition.

Hi Coach Jay,
I’m a 36 year-old male recovering from a broken 5th metatarsal in my left foot. Before my injury, I was running 35 to 40 miles a week at a pace of about 6:50 to 7 minutes a mile. I was also running one long run a week of about 10 to 12 miles. My question is: What is a good weekly mileage and pace to startup again? -Alkim

Thanks for the specifics in terms of age, pace and running volume. First, find an MD or PT or even a DC that can monitor the ossification of that area before you resume running; I would highly recommend that you wait to run until they deem the bone fully healed. Secondly, I’m going to suggest you do something that I personally despise and were it recommended to me, I’d be annoyed: pool running. The problem with pool running compared to regular running is that if you were running 35-40 miles a week at 6:50 to 7:00 pace, then you’re running a nice pace and you’re cruising along, scenery passing as you run. But now you have no scenery and no kinesthetic sense of moving through the world; it feels less like a journey and more like an obligation. That being said, you only need to be in the pool 1-2 days a week these first couple of months, and then you will only need to go there if you’re trying to run a PR this summer ( i.e. trying to maintain your aerobic fitness without the impact of running). Finally, are you willing to add some long walks to your weekly workout routine? Again, not as cool as an 8 mile run at 7:00 pace, yet if you can walk for 90 minutes you’re basically taking out an insurance policy on your body because you’re gently stressing the bones, ligaments, tendons and muscles for a longer duration than you would running, yet at a much lower intensity. Some Japanese marathoners incorporate long walks/hikes into the start of their marathon training for the same reason.

Here is a very conservative plan, yet if you follow it you will likely be ready to run once the spring weather becomes more inviting for running:

First two week cycle: 20 min run, 20 min run, 35 min in the pool, 25 min run, 20 min run or 60 min hike/walk, 35 min in the pool, off; repeat

Second two week cycle: 30 min run, 20 min run, 35 min in the pool, 35 min run, 20 min run or 60-80 min hike/walk, 35 min in the pool, off; repeat

Third two week cycle: 40 min run, 25 min run, 35 min in the pool, 40 min run, 60-80 min hike/walk, 35 min in the pool, off; repeat

You are probably ready for 5 days a week of running at this point, yet don’t get carried away with intensity until you’ve seen the doc again and they’ve done all the tests they need to do (my personal favorite being the tuning fork that they hold close to the bone - if the bone is not healed, the vibration will feel mildly uncomfortable. In the worse case, it will hurt like crazy, meaning the bone is a long way from healed). One final thing: I’ve had a lot of foot problems myself and I’m an advocate of orthotics, yet I wear an orthotic in the super-soft, neutral shoe, the Vomero. Orthotics aren’t cheap, but it’s a great investment with this type of injury.

I am a 16 year-old girl and a junior in high school; I have been running cross country and track for three years. Currently, I am competing in indoor track in the mile and 2-mile events. I run very consistent splits throughout the whole race which helps me to gain on other runners who begin to tire. Within the last quarter of the race I usually surge by the opponents I am trying to beat and the last lap (200m) I go all out. My problem is that right at the last straight away, I usually get passed. I may have a pretty good lead, but at the last 50m or so, I always get out sprinted. Coming in to that last turn, however, I don’t feel exhausted - I still feel I can sprint, but it’s never as much as the other girl. I don’t want to be known as the girl who always gets outsprinted at the end. My question is, do you have any tips on how to perfect the end of a distance race? What strategies can I employ if I know I am a very steady-paced runner and not the best sprinter at the finish? Do you have any workouts that I could try? Thanks.

Wow, great question. This one is really tricky because as well as you described the scenario, without seeing you it’s hard to know exactly what’s happening in the race. That being said, we can discuss two things that are so general, so simple, they should help any athlete; one is for the end of the race and the other is for the beginning and middle of the race.

Sprint coaches talk about “staying short” at the end of the race as virtually all runners in the 400m on up to the 10,000m tend to over-stride when they fatigue. Again, I haven’t seen you run, yet I’d be shocked if you’re not slightly over-striding in those last 50m, partly because you want to run faster and you’re literally leaning forward to get to the finish line. The cue you should repeat in your mind in the last 100m and especially the last 50m is “stay short” and “up tall”. Now, what this does from a biomechanical standpoint is that it keeps your foot striking the ground under your hips, which is what you want. Conversely, when you over-stride or when you lean forward, you tend to have a foot-strike in front of your hips, which means that you’re slightly “braking” with each step. In some ways this is counterintuitive, to stay up tall and keep your strides quick and short, rather than to lean forward and cover a lot of ground with each stride to get to the line. But it works, and the cool thing is that you’ll feel it after just one race where you do it correctly.

The next thing you could do is also simple, but you need a coach/parent/friend (ideally a numerically anal one) to help you. Have someone take all of your 200m splits (to the tenth of a second) for a 1,600m and see what they look like. Most athletes go out hard, settle into a pace, and then in the last 200m they speed up; that’s a good way to run and it sounds like you’re doing one better by running a consistent pace from the gun and then accelerating. However, my guess is that right now your last 200m is either the same as your penultimate 200m or just a slight bit faster (even though it feels like they’re different paces) and what you want is to have your last 200m your fastest 200m. This is easier said than done, yet very important, especially since you’ve done a good job running consistent splits until the last 400m. You want that last 400m to be “faster, fastest” for the penultimate 200m and the final 200m. Also, if you run against the same competitors over two or three weeks and you get out-kicked in the first race, then make it a point to run 5 meters behind that woman the next time you race and see if you can out-kick her. You might not run a PR that day, but the sensation of passing someone in the final 50m is empowering, and it is a great visual to take into the next week of training.

Best of luck through the indoor and outdoor seasons.

Coach Jay,
I started running in the summer of 2007. I began running for 20 minutes 6 days a week (taking Sundays off). Each following week, I would increase my time by 10 minutes each day. By the time I was running for 80 minutes a day 6 days a week, I developed pain in my left knee due to a laterally tracking patella (chondromalacia?). At this point I was running at least a 10k every day. I could not physically keep running due to the pain, even with a prescription of an anti-inflammatory and a pretty hardcore knee-brace from a sports medicine doctor’s office.

I have just started to run again, taking it pretty easy so that I do not develop this problem again. I am currently running 3-5 miles every other day. How can I increase my mileage so that I can work up to a marathon (at least twice a month would be amazing)? Any help you can offer me would be greatly appreciated. -Joshua

Joshua,
Great question and thanks for the details regarding your initial increase in mileage. Going back to your first foray into running, the initial build-up was appropriate (6 days a week of 20 minutes a day, taking Sundays off). However, the next step is the problem, because by adding 10 minutes a day you’re not giving your bones, ligaments, tendons and muscles time to adapt to the stress of running, even though your cardiovascular system can handle that workload. Also, all training philosophies regarding endurance sports have some sort of oscillation between hard, medium and easy days; your program was rigidly fixed on the same amount of running everyday and that rigidity didn’t give your body a chance to adapt to the training. This is such a simple concept, yet accepting the fact that the workout itself IS NOT where the body makes an adaptation but rather the body makes an adaptation during the rest/recovery/regeneration phase following a workout is very difficult to trust; we’re all told that work equals results and more work equals better results. Simply put, if you run 50 minutes one morning you don’t gain any fitness in the run itself but rather you gain fitness in the hours and days following the workout - as you work at your desk the rest of the day, as you watch a movie that night and (most importantly) when you sleep that evening. What I just described is a runner’s version of Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) and that concept is central to all training, from strength training for body builders to multi-sport training for triathletes.

Specific to your goal of running a marathon, my first recommendation is to get to a point where you can do one marathon and then worry about how often you compete, as one or two per month may or may not be realistic. Secondly, you may eventually want to get on a simple seven-day schedule of Hard, Medium, Easy, Hard, Medium, Easy, Off to take advantage of the body’s rhythmic ability to adapt to training (again, this “rhythm” goes back to Hans Selye’s GAS). You can probably handle 20 miles a week soon if you ran 5 days in a week, so do that for the next two weeks, with no single run over 6 miles. And run EASY! This is not the time to worry about pace/intensity. After two weeks at 20 miles then bump up to 25 for two weeks and then 30 for two weeks. Once there, you can do the following: Long Run of 8 miles, then an easy 6 mile run, an easy 3 mile run, followed by a 7 mile run with the middle 4 miles a little faster than your normal pace (no racing!), an easy 5 mile run, and a really easy 3 mile run and then a day off. That adds up to 32 miles, so do that for three weeks. Then you can probably follow that same rhythm and bump up the mileage to 40 miles a week and do that for three weeks, then try a three week period of

50 miles
45 miles
40 miles

….and feel free to make your long run 25% of your weekly volume during each of these weeks.

So, in the 50 mile week you can run 12.5, and in the 45 miles week you can run just over 11 miles. You might be wondering why not go from 40 to 45 to 50 over three weeks? The idea is that you stress the body in a macro-sense of 14 days with more running than you’ve done by running a 50 and 45 mile week back to back, yet in week three you have a “down week” to recover and regenerate from the work you did over the past two weeks. Anecdotally I’ve found this works well when people are making gains in volume.

Now, to be honest, at this point you may or may not be ready for a marathon, yet I think there is a great chance you’ll be healthy and enjoying your running. Also, you can definitely finish a marathon at this volume if you’re willing to intersperse some walking with running. I know this is not a sexy plan, yet if you follow this 15-week program, then you’ll be able to “seriously train” for New York or Chicago during the summer months because of the solid, safe foundation you’ve laid this spring.

Best of luck and I hope this helps.