How to Train For Any Race Using Short Distances

When stepping up to a new distance, it can help by focusing on short intervals you're familiar with.

Up. Tap the pole. Down. Tap the Bridge. Up. Tap. Down.… Over the weekend, on one of many hill-repeat sessions, I came to the realization that the majority of my training for a 200-mile trail race through big mountain terrain has been on a single mile. It’s not even a trail, and, in fact, some of it is even paved. How can I possibly prepare for such a big goal on such seemingly wildly inappropriate training grounds?

There was a time when I could go out on any given weeknight and run for three or four hours. But: life. Now I find myself having to balance running with family obligations, keeping a new dog from chewing up all my shoelaces, and doing work on a new home. And it’s so easy these days, especially with Strava and social media, to fall into a trap of comparing my own training to people putting in loads of miles in the Alps or the Rockies. But the reality is no matter what goals we runners are training for, we have to work with what we’ve got. A few years ago, when COVID shut down my local trails, I found myself turning to a few of these short segments, and ping-ponging from end to end purely because there was nowhere else to go. While it was not the most scenic running I’ve ever done, I found myself getting stronger physically and mentally. It turns out I inadvertently adopted a training concept known as “chunking” in place of doing big majestic loops.

By necessity, I found out that I train better when I take a big, ambitious goal and break it down into things that seem reasonable: Each run or workout chips away at the goal, taking something that at the outset seems like a massive weight and bringing it down to something more manageable, more recognizable—like a carver tapping away with a chisel. No matter how small of a hill you might have to train on, or even if you’re confined to a track, or maybe not running at all due to injury—even the smallest chip you can manage whittles away at that giant block.

Two hundred miles is of course an extreme example, but when I first started running, as with so many runners, even a single mile sounded impossible. Even if you start with just one minute of running, you are breaking down whatever bigger goal you might have. For me, on race day, no matter what distance I’m doing, as the miles add up and the legs and lungs burn, I know I can focus, just as I did in training, on hearing that next tap. 

Pat Heine-Holmberg, Runner’s World’s Senior Video Producer, spends more time on trails in pursuit of going farther and higher than he does faster. PRs racked up during the 2023 Tor des Géants include earliest time to vomit (mile three), most ice cream eaten during a race (four bars), and worst night of sleep (an hour on the floor in an under-construction sports center).

posted Saturday December 30th
by Runner’s World