ACTIVE FOR CHRIST
inspire unity in Christ through a daily prayer life and an active exercise lifestyle.
Getting Started
If you haven’t already, join the Active for Christ challenge to give you a weekly prayer focus for during your runs.
If you already connect with God through your running, is there something new He is showing you to do?
Is it time to sing the praise music you’re listening to out loud? Can you invite a friend to run with you and share God with?
Let us know your thoughts about this, or if this is something you already do. We would love to hear!
Running His Race,
Coach Elizabeth
@Endurance4You
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Running can be a form of worship and time with God. It can be a time of praise or fellowship with others.
There is so much more to running than just getting out there and running for a particular time or distance.
I challenge you to ask God to show you how to use running beyond what you have been doing.
How do you build strength?
When you think about building strength in your faith, what does that look like for you?
It’s important to have a strong foundation in Christ and from there build your life brick by brick by applying and living out God’s Word. This can be done through:
Memorizing scripture
Praying
Bible Study
Fellowship,
and reading His Word.
This helps build strength so when the storms of life come, we won’t crash and burn.
A running training cycle is similar. You also build it brick by brick until you reach your peak and you’re ready to perform. The first layer is the base training phase, which we discussed last month. If you missed it, check it out here.
The second layer is the strength phase. When you hear strength, you may think more of hitting weights in the gym. That’s great to do too when planned right in your training cycle. I highly recommend doing runner specific strength training, but that’s a topic for another day.
Strength Phase Purpose: Strengthening the body while building power and endurance with the use of specific types of running workouts.
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The Goal: Doing workouts such as Hill repeats, Fartleks, and Tempo runs. It’s important to gradually progress the intensity and volume of these workouts throughout the strengthening phase to help minimize the risk of injury.
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Here are two examples of workouts to implement in the Strength Phase:
This Progression Hill Workout – This one uses a combination of hill repeats but set on different durations
The Gradual Decent – This is a good type of structured Fartlek Workout
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Why: These workouts assist with muscle adaptation, improved running economy, increased power and speed, and injury prevention.
It’s also essential the day after you do an “effort” run, meaning a hard run, make it a day of rest or active recovery. If you want to still run, do an easy recovery run to get the blood flowing back through your muscles while allowing your body to repair itself from the harder work you did the day before.
If you have any questions, always feel free to DM me!
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Happy Training!
Running His Race,
Coach Elizabeth
@Endurance4You
BASE TRAINING:
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If our foundation isn’t on Christ, how will we handle circumstance that can break us?
If your house doesn’t have a strong foundation, what will happen? RE: (Matthew 7:24-27)
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It’s important to have a strong foundation in both the areas above. Running also requires a strong foundation to grow within the sport. You build your running foundation during “base training.”
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Base training can get overlooked since it consists of a lot of easy running, which requires patience. But it is essential for the growth of running. RE: (Galatians 6:9)
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Let’s dive a little deeper into this.
Base Training Purpose: To establish an aerobic fitness foundation, endurance, neuromuscular efficiency, and injury prevention.
The Goal: To do all easy running; this phase lasts about 6-16 weeks, with the objective of building the aerobic base.
Why: This allows the body to adapt to training stress and reduce the risk of injury as well as safely building up milage.
Is it just easy running? - There are some essential running workouts to do during the base training phase that can help work the fast-twitch muscles and continue to build your aerobic base without stepping into anaerobic workouts.
*This is a good time to do strength training as well and lift heavier before going into race-specific training.
Building your endurance is critical for long-distance running and is the main component for setting a strong foundation for your training cycle.
Whether athletes are beginning their run journey or are intermediate runners, I always prefer to start them at the base training phase.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Happy Base Training!
Running His Race,
Coach Elizabeth
