You run for 90 minutes, feet constantly in motion, then pick up the intensity and burst into a sprint. Sounds a lot like a 10K or a half- marathon race, right? It also sounds a lot like the game of soccer.

Many endurance athletes seem to have roots in the original game of football--known here in the U.S. as soccer--and attribute their success to certain qualities of the sport.

Soccer offers lessons we can relate to: endurance, discipline and just plain ol' guts. A typical game lasts 90 minutes with two 45-minute halves, and little time left idle. An athlete can cover anywhere from two to nine miles in the span of one game, depending on the position.

"Soccer by definition is fartlek training, and a lot of the training techniques are the same as long distance running," said Pierre Barrieu, fitness coach for the men's U.S. World Cup team. Like endurance runners, his players have a very high aerobic capacity and a high lactic threshold because they are used to performing for 90 to 120 minutes.

Ironman veteran Jeff Devlin grew up playing soccer since the age of eight and remembers his high school coach saying, "'There's no way we're going to let the other team out-run us.' We had to be able to go out there and run for 90 minutes straight."

To meet that end, soccer training consists of prolonged interval workouts that endurance athletes can emulate: from a mix of distance runs, to tempo runs, to the grueling "suicides" of 600- to 800-yard line dashes with 30 seconds of rest in between. The breakdown in a typical game is: 50 percent walking, 30 percent medium intensity jogging, 15 percent high intensity running, and five percent sprinting.

Skip Gilbert, executive director for U.S.A. Triathlon, compares soccer skills to triathlon training.

"We always had a plan and the better athletes plan instead of just going out and winging it," said Gilbert, who played soccer for the Tampa Bay Rowdies and trained for a stint with England's Sheffield United. He also added that a lot of soccer players cycle in the off-season and make the jump to triathlon when their playing days are over.

"A lot of soccer players are type A-personalities and it's easy to take that ethic and apply it across three sports," said Gilbert.

Quick recovery is also key. In soccer, players have to be able to sprint full-out for 100 yards and continue to run for an entire game. Similarly, runners experience those competitive moments of having to pick up the race pace, while triathletes quickly switch gears in transitions.

Devlin, who coaches endurance athletes, cautioned that a lot of athletes make the mistake in thinking that all they need to do is long aerobic runs. However, to get to the next level, workouts need to incorporate some level of high intensity anaerobic training.

For those of us who did not grow up playing soccer, however, all is not lost. Barrieu stressed that the goal should be to optimize your running session.

"If you vary the intensity and make the best out of your 90 minutes, or whatever your run, you'll be in good shape when it comes to the next race."

So, we can turn to a similar strategy and go beyond just putting in the miles to get across the goal line--er, finish line.