Geting Faster
This week was a good one for workouts -- seasonably cool at first and moderating toward the end of the week with no rain; a good week to work toward getting a little faster before the winter and spring races, which for me start with a 5k in downtown Greenville the last weekend of this month. The race is a large one, with anywhere between 700 and 1000 runners and walkers, so placing is not a possibility for me; still, it holds some significance for me because it is the first road race I ever ran in, in January 2004. I had been running less than two months then, and still thought that 5k was a long way to run at any pace faster than a jog. My goal was to finish in under 30 minutes, and I made it, at 27:37, in 30 degree weather, wearing full sweats and cross-trainers. It's easy to laugh now looking back on it, but it was a necessary step on the path to becoming a runner. The next year I came back as a runner, in shorts and Mizuno Riders, and clock what for me was then a 5k PR, 23:10. I didn't beat that last year because of a hectic schedule and a loose shoelace, so
I'm going to give it a shot again this year. It doesn't sound that tough, around 7:25 splits, but it's hard to get out of that mash of people at the start, and in order to get downtown to finish, one has to get up a huge hill. But it's doable, especially if I put in the work ahead of time. One thing I've discovered during the past 3+ years is that speed can be built up fairly quickly and in a relatively short amount of time, and usually atrophies just as quickly when one neglects it.
Anyway, I had three good workout this week geared toward building up speed, and it occurs to me that there a a lot of beginning and intermediate runners out there, and it is possible that one or two of them might actually stumble upon this site. If so, a brief description of the workouts I did this week -- essentially a beginning, intermediate, and a somewhat advanced workout -- might be helpful.
If you're a beginning runner who maybe has run a 5k or two, and you want to shave some time off your finish, a tempo workout is a good one to add to your weekly routine. A tempo run simply requires running at a comfortably hard pace for a set period of time to increase your lactate threshold, which is a measure of how fast your leg muscles get rid of lactic acid (the faster, the better). If you've run a 5k or other race before, simply calculate your pace per mile in your last 5k and plan on running your tempo workout about 30 seconds per mile slower (if you haven't run a 5k before, or haven't run one recently, do a time trial by running 3 miles at a hard pace and timing yourself, dividing your total time by 3). I usually begin with a slow warmup of 1.5 miles or so at an easy pace, then begin timing myself and turn my speed up to tempo pace. A beginner should probably try to hold this pace for about 10-12 minutes on the first workout, and then increase the length of the run by 1-2 minutes each week; more experienced runners can run longer at first, around 15-20 minutes. End the workout by cooling down for a mile or so at an easy pace. It'll teach your legs to hold a fast pace longer and function better when they're tired. My Tuesday tempo workout consisted of a 12-minute warmup followed by 22 minutes at tempo (run at a 7:40 pace, which admitedly was a little too fast) and a mile of cool-down.
The second hard workout I did this week was one that I had never done before. My wife, who coaches a middle-school running club, told me about a drill that she had read about in Runner's World which was supposed to increase stride frequency. Developed by running coach Greg McMillan, it consists of ten short, fast strides at 95% effort with 2 minutes of easy running in between. It sounds easy, but while it was not the hardest speed workout I have ever done, I was kind of happy when it was over. The strides whould be close to all-out, and you should keep moving between reps. The first time she did this workout with her students, they (not to mention the other coaches and volunteers) were wiped out, and talked about it at school the next day until it became the stuff of legend. Skeptical, I joined them for their second workout, which involved 20-second speed reps instead of the 15-second ones they had done the previous week. I found it tough on the lungs, but not as much so on the legs, which were not as tired as they normally would have been after a speed session. This would be a good alternative to standard speedwork for an intermediate runner -- especially if time is at a premium -- or an introduction to speedwork for a beginning runner.
My third hard workout of the week, done this morning, was more advanced, consisting of ten 800-meter reps on the track with 400-meter jogs in between. Normally I would do this workout in the manner suggested by longtime Runner's World conributor Bart Yasso, which involves doing the reps at around 10k pace. But since I'm training primarily for a 5k at present, I ran them a little faster, averaging around 3:37 per rep, or 10-15 seconds per mile faster than 5k pace. I try to do one or two sets of Yasso 800s a month no matter what I am training for, as they are good training for any race. I am convinced that they played a major role in helping me run my first sub-four-hour marathon this fall.
So what's next? The 5k is in 2 weeks, so unless I catch my wife's cold this week, I'm going to do another tempo either Tuesday or Wednesday, and on Friday I will tackle one of my customized workouts, ten .1-mile uphill reps at 95% up the street that comes out in front of my house. Sunday I will probably go to the track and do three 1600-meter reps with 800-meter recovery intervals. Then the week leading up to the race will be all easy running.
Posted by MHB
at 6:36 PM EST