Alberto Salazar Magazine article (Read 708 times)

I would do almost anything to stay on trails. Sadly, most metro areas are paving their trails so they are accessible to everyone (which is a good thing), but I'd much rather run on chipped stone or something than pavement. During college we'd do all of our speed work on the grass somewhere and we ran a lot of shoulders. I don't know enough about the body to say for sure, but running mostly on trails and converting to roads is a lot better than running on a treadmill than switching to roads. Some of the trails I run are pretty hard packed - still softer than roads - but not super soft either. Trails are the place to be!

Well, Alberto's athletes are all track stars, so they don't need to be able to handle long distances on the roads.

oh yeah I guess I didn't really think about that...I know Kara Goucher ran that half marathon last fall (beating Radcliff) but I was thinking some of his other runners were road racers... Good point!

Testimonial for running on soft surfaces: A little more than 3 years ago I started training again just before turning 59. This followed more than 7 years of jogging only a few miles a week and almost never racing. During the first year back I had several minor injuries and one that started to border on being major before I solved it. Out of desperation I started combing the area for a grassy place that I could stand to run on. I'd tried a few times in the past but never cared for it. The areas were always too small or the grass had too many ruts and bumps underneath. Finally I settled on a large park that is often used for soccer. I learned to love the little 1.4 loop with it's thick, but well-manacured carpet of soft grass and the way it felt under my feet. In the past 2 years I've done 70% or more of my miles there and have not been injured since. As far as being able to handle racing on pavement after doing such a high percentage of training on grass, I have found that the roads feel so much faster after all the miles on the grass. I have actually raced better there than when I was doing all my training on pavement. I will add, however, that I did the majority of my long runs on a rolling, asphalt trail. Also, I did 3 or 4 workouts a month on the track. The grass loop has been used primarily for maintenance and recovery runs, which makes up the bulk of mileage as it does for most runners. My best 2 races of the year were a half marathon and 30k that were both run asphalt...legs felt good the whole way. They didn't respond so well in a marathon that followed, but I believe it was more because I ran it so soon after the hard 30k than because of not enough training on the roads. I'm a big believer in the soft surfaces theory. It gave me a new lease on my running life.

After running mostly on concrete for the last couple of months, I feel like my legs are a little worn down and I need a softer surface.

Ouch! Why do you run on concrete? That's even harder than pavement....

Kara's been waiting to make her marathon debut for a while. She's a long way from committing to a fall race. Wait till after Beijing. If she can stay healthy, she's a world-beater. Her performance in Osaka was the inevitable result of uninterrupted training. Hopefully this knee surgery won't set her back much, because I think that she should retire with every American record over 10k (unless Shalane moves up in distance). Rupp obviously has the potential as well. 27:33 as a 21 year old is pretty awesome, by American standards. Unfortunately, I think he'll have to move up to the marathon if he's going to compete on the world stage. The 10k is an event that the Africans just own. At every other distance, the best Americans can at least be in the mix. Our 10k record is not even close to being competitive. (Ironically, it's held by an African-born runner).

Kara is a real "cutie" too which makes it even more fun to keep an eye on her career