Work on strengths or weaknesses? (Read 933 times)

My guess is that you ran your best race because most of your energy was devoted to working on your strength, which is more in the direction of endurance. You might not have run as well if you'd spent a high percentage of your time on V02 max and working on your finishing kick. I'm not saying that we don't have to work on our weaknesses--not at all, just that most of our energy should be spent working on our strengths. It was probably no accident that you ran your best race during a period of peak mileage and lots of threshold work.

While my mileage buildup into that race was SLIGHTLY higher than buildups into previous 10Ks in the 32 range, the key difference was actually very, very robust VO2max work (ie 8X800 2:22 avg 90sec recovery, 6-8X1000 3:02 avg 2min recovery). This made sub-5 miles feel easy, I just did not work enough on raw speed to have any kick.