Stretching should be done but not intensely. The goal of our stretching is not to see how far past your toes you can reach (your knees, if you’re like me), or to get as flexible as possible. Our goal is simply to get our muscles loose, so that they can go through a running motion without much resistance. It doesn’t help your running any if you get so flexible you can stick your leg behind your head. In fact, some scientific evidence says that this hurts running performance. You also need to be careful because overstretching a muscle can aggravate an injury or sometimes create new ones. It’s also important to always do a light warmup of jogging for 5-10 minutes before stretching. A cold muscle is much easier to overstretch, especially in the cold weather of the early spring.
Form drills serve a few different functions. They help your legs develop some of the explosive power you will need in a race. These drills consist of things like skipping, high knees, leg crossovers, fast feet, etc. They get your legs moving fast and in different motions than normal running. Because of the new and different motions they also help to stretch your muscles in ways that regular running and stretching don’t. Since these motions are new and different, you may feel a little sore the first few times you do them, but your legs will quickly adapt. These do not need to be done every day, but once or twice a week, on a day where you will be running easily.
Strength work is done to strengthen the muscles that help your running, but don’t get strengthened much just by our regular running. Your legs already get strengthened, so I don’t think you need to be doing lots of lifting for your legs. Your arms and the various abdominal muscles that make up your ‘core’ can use some additional strengthening, however. Your arms are constantly swinging when you run, to help balance your body. The faster you run, the more they swing, and the more power they contribute to your stride. We’re not looking to spend a lot of time in the weight room building up our guns, but just trying to give our arms the strength to provide that power when it’s needed. The abdominal muscles hold your body in place while you run. If you watch some of the best runners in the world, you’ll notice that their torso is usually pretty still while their arms and legs move around it. The stronger your abs, obliques, and lower back muscles are, the longer they can keep you running well and with less energy. Our strength work will mostly consist of things like crunches, oblique crunches, leg lifts, pushups, etc.
All the different types of additional work we do should usually be done simply as part of the warmup or cooldown routine.