Hal Higdon

Your big race is just hours away, and you’re fidgeting between hotel sheets, watching the clock’s readout creep toward 3 a.m. You know your body and mind need rest, but even with a sheep inventory in the four figures, you’re no closer to nodding off than you were several hours ago. Will a night without sleep undermine your hopes for the race? Or is one fitful night inconsequential to a healthy runner?There’s no doubt that the quality of our sleep has a profound affect on our performance, not jus…

At certain races each year, Runner’s World staffers offer to pace other runners to help them achieve their goal times. We know our pacing teams work because so many people tell us they wouldn’t have been able to do it without us.Yet, new research from Japan suggests you might be able to take your running to even higher levels if you learn how to pace yourself rather than relying on people like us to do it for you.In the study, University of Tsukuba researcher Kazuo Takai surveyed 60 runners who…

We know what to call Kenyans. What do we call ourselves?

Despite the large number of people running these days—millions of us—we often are guilty of not caring about our sport. Our focus often is obsessively inward. Some years ago on a Saturday morning, just before heading out for a long run with a group of nearly 100 Chicago area runners training with one of my marathon programs, I asked how many had bothered to watch the the World Track & Field Championships the night before. Only a couple of hands went up. This saddened me, because how can we show…

This article has been excerpted and adapted from Run Fast: How to Beat Your Best Time — Every Time, by Hal Higdon. They are disparagingly called “junk miles”—those slow, extra miles done on our easy days or in second workouts, sometimes to inflate training mileage, so that we can say we ran 25 miles last week rather than 15, or 50 rather than 45. I certainly plead guilty. During my peak years, I ran twice daily, often dragging myself through extra workouts so I could hit 100 miles a week, an imp…

Here’s what science has to say about detraining and returning to running.