Runnerslife
Meet The Guest
Justin Chaston
| Event | P.B. |
| 1500m | 3 Minutes 46 Seconds |
| 3000m | 7 Minutes 59 Seconds |
| 3000 s/c | 8 Minutes 23 Seconds |
| 5,000m | 13 Minutes 51 Seconds |
| 10,000m | 29 Minutes 10 Seconds |
| 1/2 Marathon | 63 Minutes 06 Seconds |
| Marathon | 4 Hours 06 Minutes (Aged 12 at the first Cardiff Marathon!) |
Throughout my running career I was fortunate enough to run with very strong groups. I spent my most successful years training in Houston with a number of steeplechasers who could run in the low 8:30s. Of the group, I was the fastest steeplechaser and the slowest miler so I felt I was able to utilize their speed in the shorter sessions and drag the others along in the longer workouts.
There are obvious advantages running in a group in bad weather where you are able to share the lead and shelter the followers from the wind. For anyone who has ever cycled in earnest, the benefits of drafting are clear, but the session itself tends to become a fartlek style workout. However, I believe as long as the talent level of the group in general is fairly similar, the level of effort, and the times achieved, will be stronger as a whole. If the group contains people of a very disparate skill level, then it can be very disadvantageous to run as a group since the performance of the group as whole is constrained to the weakest link.
From a psychological and logistical standpoint, running in groups really pays off. By simply agreeing to meet people at a certain time and place obliges the "considerate" runner to show up on time. I no longer run with groups (due to family and work constraints) and find myself skipping many, many sessions simply because I haven't committed to anyone. Although I point to group running as being very beneficial, it is not essential. For the experienced runner it is very possible to get some great training in on your own. You do have much more flexibility on when and where you train, which is very important for people living in rural areas or people with time constraints, but it is essential to be that much more disciplined.
Shortly before making the 2004 Olympic team I moved from Houston, Texas to Colorado Springs, Colorado. I no longer had a group to run with on a regular basis and was no longer able to meet my coach face to face. However, becoming self-employed I was able to determine when I trained, and with regular e-mail communication with my coach, I could get the input and feedback necessary to get to a very high level of performance.
Speed Work
Being an endurance based athlete (as opposed to speed), my favourite sessions would involved longer reps with short recovery. My personal favourite is 6 x 1000m as follows:
First set: 3 x 1000m (68s per 400m pace) with 30 seconds rest. 3 min rest.
Second set: 2 x 1000m (66s per 400m pace) with 30 seconds rest. 3 min rest.
Third set: 1 x 1000m (64s per 400m pace)
Recovery always varied but at some point during each session I would try to get down to something with 30 seconds rest to simulate race situations.
The winter would involve much more endurance to build the base and as the summer came around the mix would shift to shorter, faster sessions. I was always amazed how hard it would be to run anything quick in the winter and then how easy it would come when the summer came around.
My warm up would typically be 8 laps, clockwise, in the outer lane with the last two or three laps considerably faster than the first few.
In the winter I would do hill sessions every Saturday morning consisting of 1/2 mile loops of undulating and sharp hills, with a total distance of 3 to five miles with 3 minute rests between each rep.
Examples:
A) 6 x 1 loop.
B) 3 x 2 loops.
C) 2 loops, 1 loop, 2 loops, 1 loop, 2 loops.
D) 3 loops, 2 loops, 1 loop.
Long Run
Q. How often?
A. Every Sunday
Q. How long?
A. Between 90 minutes and 2-1/2 hours in the winter
Q. How fast?
A. Slow enough to talk
Q. Group or alone?
A. Group if possible
Rest
Q. How often would you take a day off?
A. 1 day every 2 weeks (or more if the body is telling you)
Q. How often would you take a break (longer than a week) and how often?
A. Never. Even if I'm on holiday I feel better when I run (may only be 20 minutes).
Steady Runs
Q. How fast would they be?
A. Runs up to 1 hour are always sub 6 minute pace (at sea level)
Easy Runs
Q. Did you do any?
A. If it's a morning run before a track session I would run between 20 and 30 minutes very slow just to get the body temperature up and the breathing going.
Q. What pace would they be?
A. Embarrassingly slow
Seasons
Q. What mileage in winter or summer would you do?
A. Winter: +/- 90 miles per week. Summer: 70 (ish)
Q. What would be an average week (summer or winter)
A.
Sunday: Long run
Monday: Track
Tuesday: 1 hour easy
Wednesday: Track
Thursday: 1 hour easy
Friday: 45 mins
Saturday: Hills or race
Try to run an easy run of 30 mins on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Racing
Q. How often?
A. During the winter I would run a 5K or 10K road race every couple of weeks (I don’t like road racing though!)
Q. Would they be part of a longer run?
A. No.
Q. Would training races be less than 100%?
A. I may run a race not rested physically, but I would never give it less than 100% mentally.
Q. Is cross country a must?
A. There were no cross-country leagues available to me living in Texas, so No. But if I lived in the UK I would definitely have done a full cross-country season.
Massage/Weights
Q. Massage important:?
A. I have always been reactive with massage; using it when I have a niggling injury but not when I don’t. While I think massage helps, I have absolutely no evidence it has elevated (or reduced) my performances.
Q. Weights? How often? How long?
Q. Circuits? how often? how long?
A. Never used to do weights, but starting doing a 15 minute circuit BEFORE my run on Tuesdays and Thursdays in 2004 and felt it really helped.
Diet
Q. Any specifics?
A. Just a balanced diet involving plenty of fruit and vegetables and protein.
Q. How important is it?
A. It's very important to eat correctly but it's also very hard to! You can definitely eat too much as well as eat too little. Everyone is different but the vast majority of very successful runners I came across in my career had no specific diet (at least they didn't when eating the buffets at meet hotels and major games!).
Q. Views on British runners past and present
A. British runners in the 70s and 80s were running faster (as a whole) than today's athletes. There were undoubtedly some very talented athletes from that era, but they were also at the top of the world rankings. Today's western runners are so far from the world lead that there is very little incentive (or opportunity) to win major races. Success breeds success and the chances of success in today's athletics climate are much slimmer.
There's no doubt that performances have diminished in recent years. Athletics is obviously a very statistical sport and the numbers are very clear. The reasons for the downward trend have been well documented and my views are very much in line with the majority. There are fewer kids coming into the sport and there are more distractions that are not conducive to athletic performance.
There has also been the advent of the African runner for today's Brit to compete against. The times being run by the top Africans, and the number of Africans running those times, leads me to believe that they are simply better running machines. From a statistical standpoint I find it difficult to argue against this and yet there are a number of old-timers who maintain that the Africans are just training harder. When you look at the line-up of any Olympic final there is never an even distribution of geographic demography. The sprints are dominated by the Americans (or athletes of East African heritage) and the distance events are mostly won by Africans whose ancestors have grown up at altitude. With travel around the world becoming so much more accessible, the best ethnic groups for running are coming to the fore and that's not us.
Justin
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