Transitioning into Running Season

by GRP biathlete Luke Brown

The sound of melting snow dripping off your eaves and chirping birds waiting for your feeder’s return are making your legs antsy. You storage waxed your skis as the roads cleared of ice and your instagram became more Molly Seidel and less Julia Kern. Yes, I know that Kilian is still up in the mountains, but you can rest assured that Kipchoge is pounding the roads to show us that no human is limited. And then to show us that again. Wherever you are in the snow/road continuum, the Kilian/Kipchoge dichotomy, the winter/spring transition, it’s good to be aware of how the switch back into running can be done best, both for your body and mind. Some of you southerners don’t have to worry about this quite as much so you can go back to planting your gardens, or have you already started harvesting?, while those of us up north get excited for rain because it helps clear the snow. Anyway, I thought it’d be helpful for a few of you to hear about how I and my other winter athlete teammates think about transitioning back to running after a long ski season that included only short jogs here and there.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, the overarching concept here is that our bones, tendons, and muscles adapt to NOT getting pounded by running over the winter and they can get injured if we up the mileage and intensity too quickly in the spring. Everyone is different and your return to running should depend on your overall fitness, age, injury history, and mileage you kept up with in the winter. Here a few things that everyone can think about to help with the transition.

Vary modalities:

Yes, we’re talking about how to build running mileage effectively, and the last thing you want to hear is that spin biking can help you get back to running, but… spin biking can help you get back to running. When we return to running after a different competitive season, our hearts and lungs are more fit than our running muscles. So it’s super easy to get carried away and want to keep up the same volume of training and do all of it running. Our breathing and cardiovascular systems will feel good. But eventually our bodies will break down. So say you want to do an hour workout to maintain or build fitness, just start with 15 minutes of running and then go bike for 45 so that you accomplished your training goal while respecting your body’s need to slowly adapt to the pounding. Then every couple of days, run longer (say, increase by 5 minutes) and bike shorter until you’re running for an hour. Likewise, paddling, row or ski erging, ski touring, or any other type of cross training can serve as your complimentary form of exercise.

Think about your running surface:

Concrete is the hardest, asphalt is next, then dirt, wood chips, clay, mud, water. That’s a technically accurate list based on the Mohs hardness scale. Of course in the spring, the roads are going to clear first so you may need to run on asphalt to begin with. Just keep in mind that the harder the running surface the more force going into your bones, tendons, muscles, so build mileage even more slowly if you’re only running on the paved roads.

Do the stretching, mobility, and strength you know you should do:

In all likelihood you know you should stretch and you know you should do something for your glutes that includes some sort of band. But you don’t. Just go look up some things on YouTube! Or check out our moves of the month on the Craftsbury blog and choose a few things you’re going to do for the month as you build back into running (like this one)! There are also drills you can add on to your runs like walking on your toes and walking on her heels that can help build some muscles that you lost in your lower legs over the winter. Similarly, the spring can be a great time to work on your running form. Form drills like A and B-skips are fantastic for re-teaching your neuromuscular system how you want your body to run. I’m not going to dive too deep into that here but this video shows some helpful drills.

Build into the speed like you’re folding egg whites into a batter, not mixing on high:

Run easy to start. Just easy. For a week at least. As I said earlier, I know you’ll want to go fast because your lungs and heart feel good. But, hey, what’s the rush? After a week of easy running, start to add in some very short, like less than a minute, pickups. Play with the speed a bit during these pickups. Do one at your marathon pace, do a pickup at your 10k pace, then 5k, then mile pace. This will let you body start to feel what it’s like to go fast and will help those bones, tendons, and muscles that seems to be a theme of this article adapt.

Oh, and if you find a grass field and go do some light barefoot strides, you’ll be knocking out these last three recommendations: grass is soft, barefoot running builds small muscles in your feet, and strides are a great way to build into speed (what is a stride? - start out jogging and then build into 90% effort over 100 meters all while maintaining good form). But as always, you know your body better than I do so if running barefoot is a bad idea, don’t do it!

As you begin to up the mileage, if you start to feel a niggle, or like something is tighter than it should be, or even just a little painful, back off! Drop your runs back 5-10 minutes for a couple days or better yet, take a day off and go do something else fun! It’s better to back off before you get injured rather than after. And, if you’re still in the end of winter like us in Craftsbury, it may be the best time to transition toward running while you still have skiing left. Throw in a few runs even while you can still ski on the days in between. It’ll make it that much easier to actually start running consistently after the rain comes.

Hopefully if you follow these recommendations, you’ll set yourself up for the highest chance of success for when you run the Genny Tenny on May 6th. The dirt roads will be prime right about then I bet. So go find that spring in your step! Haha, get it?