MaccaX12 Review - Chris McCormack Run Advice

Yeah, how about running? You know, especially for, you know, like age groupers who aren't out there doing two plus hour runs or maybe you want to squeeze in something, something shorter. Do you have any favorite run sessions that you find give you a lot of bang for the buck?

Oh, I think you know that. And this is something that's come relatively new to me. I knew a lot of athletes that used to use these treadmills. I'm going to talk about treadmills. And I never really used them a lot. I never liked treadmill running. And you know, when I made a move across from Ironman to have a crack at this London Olympics and I was looking for leg speed, we really started using treadmills. And I remember thinking, these are a waste of time. I'd rather get out on the road. It's boring. And for a lot of people here in the winters, treadmills become a part and parcel of their winter training program. But I think you get a lot of bang for your buck out of your treadmill because for two reasons. Number one, you can control the speed so you can play with the gradient without changing the speed so you get a better feel for building strength at certain speeds.

I think about a 3% gradient is equivalent to running on the road. So anything under 3% is a little bit like motor pacing on a bike ride. So you can use those gradients under 3% to really work on your leg turnover. And that was what I used this, the treadmills for. In particular, going back to the Olympic distance stuff and racing the draft legal racing on the World cup circuit was trying to get that leg speed up. And on an aging athlete, that was hard. And if you go and do that on the track, you can have a lot of muscular problems, you break down and.

I just couldn't do it. But I found on the treadmill I was able to get my run cadence up. I was really able to bang out some good interval sets on the treadmill and the fatigue wasn't so great that I couldn't back up the next day and do a set, you know, do another run session, which is key. It's about banging sessions together, being consistent with your work. So treadmill sessions are good. And a great one would be, say I call it a session called Roly Polys, which is, you know, you set a target time if it's in the winter or it's before a race. For me, if I was in mid race season, I'd set my, say, my 10k race time, I'd set the pace at say three minutes, a k, for example. And I would do 10 minute intervals at that pace with a big. And I would only control the gradient every two minutes. So after two minutes, if I started the gradient at 4%, after two minutes I'd say take it down to 2%. Now, if I go down on the gradient the first time, the next two minutes I have to come up. You can't go down twice, you can't go the same direction twice. Which is why we call them Roly polys. And that is the most amazing session. I only discovered this session with the Aussies this year. Last year on camp, the Aussies training for the Olympics in Axle Laban. And I used that religiously. And the bang for my buck I got out of that was amazing.

Yeah. And for people who don't train on treadmills, it's a really good point that you brought up. You've got lower ground reaction forces. You bounce back from those workouts. I mean, what you just described is a tough workout, but you bounce back from that way quicker.

Oh, big time. That was the one thing that I noticed a lot was the recovery post treadmill and I was able to run the next day. There's that awkward feeling when you first get on a treadmill. And I was definitely one of those people because I didn't utilize them a lot in my training prior to the last two years. But once you get on top of that leg turnover and you get a feel for the treadmill because you're really using more of your hip flexors as opposed to your hamstrings, you start to be able to take that new running field, focus more on your technique and you can take that onto the road over time. And it's very much like I say, it's very similar to motor pacing for a push bike rider. For a rider. Or swimming with flippers in the swimming pool, Swimming with fins. It's a great way to pick up that speed without hurting yourself.