Two power stations (part 2)

As I started to explain last week, your body has two kinds of energy systems it can call upon.

One is for short-term energy, the other is for more long-term endur-ance. These are not the same, by any means, and not interchangeable. We know this. We all understand that we cannot take a sprinter, whose event lasts less than 11 seconds, and expect him to do well in a marathon that takes over two hours.

We cannot take a marathon runner, who thinks nothing of running two hours on Sundays, and expect him/her to do well in football. What we would probably find is that runners complain of a whole host of aches and pains after the match.

Their marathon fitness did not adequately prepare them for the different physical demands of football.

So we all know this: just because you are fit for one event does not mean you are fit for any other. Taking that one step further, all participants in sport should first try and learn the particular physical requirements of their chosen event.

So a sprinter would learn that he does not need a 10-mile run on a Sunday, and a marathon runner would learn that he does not need to be a good sprinter, and a footballer, or basketball player, would learn that they need to have some of the capability of both the sprinter and the marathon runner (but not as much as each of those specialists).

To refer back to my remark last week of new faces in the Mdina-Spinola road race, I later learned that some of them did a lot of aerobics in the gym, and were quite new to distance running. This was apparent at the beginning of the race, when a few new faces appeared quite close to the front of the field.

Since almost all runners know each other, it is easy to note the "usual suspects" in certain positions in the pack of racers. Similarly, new faces are just as easy to spot. That they knew they had good fitness background from their years of aerobics, encouraged them to start the race off at a good pace.

They expected to do well. But their lack of long distance training (lots of long Sunday runs of over two hours per time), began to tell as the race lengthened, and by the end most were running slower and had dropped back (a little) in position.

I would bet money that most had thigh and lower leg pains for the next few days. Their experience of gym aerobics had given them good general all-round fitness; a good mix of training of both energy systems. But long distance running really requires one system over the other.

In a half marathon, the endurance system is responsible for roughly 97 per cent of the energy requirement in the race, and the short-term energy system is only required for three per cent of the energy input.

So, if your training has been roughly 50-50, and a good mix of both systems, you cannot optimally be ready for long distance running. Even in the Mdina-Spinola race, more than 90 per cent of the energy will come from one energy system.

Consider it like this: you spend half your school term studying Greek literature, and half your term studying mathematics. However, when it comes to the exam, you find that 97 per cent of the marks will come from the Greek literature questions.

Obviously, you'd be upset. Why, you might ask, did we spend so much time studying maths? That's a valid question, and you can see how relevant it can be to know what the test is going to require of you.

So, when you decide to train for an event you have to know what physical energy system it will require. And then you must ensure that your training prepares you best for your chosen event. If you take away one thought, it should be this; not all training is the same.