Until now, I've only done base building. Occasionally, I'd throw in a fartlek, tempo, or hill workout, but not often enough to make a difference. I'd like to start incorporating more quality workouts. My thinking is one speed workout a week to start. Keep my long run on the weekend and fill in with easy runs. What's a good strategy for increasing pace by using speed work?
Drink up moho's!!
1 speed session a week is fine to start with. Advanced plans will have an interval session, tempo session, and a long run. I would suggest not exceeding that as you progress.
uʍop ǝpᴉsdn sǝʇᴉɹʍ ʇI
One works for me; either a hard tempo run or sometimes intervals. If I go too hard on intervals, my Achilles acts up so I take it easy. As you get stronger, you could do two, especially if you are training for a 5k. You will figure it out.
I agree with the one a week speedwork workout. I started with alternating intervals and tempo runs. I still do mostly that, 5 years later, but now I throw in on top of that hills and strides, when I feel up to it. If my legs feel too trashed for some reason, I forget the hills and strides. I also used to do a lot of progression runs in the beginning and I think that those helped me get faster, quicker. I haven't done a good progression run in a long time, btw. I'm due for one. But not this week, I think...
PRs: Boston Marathon, 3:27, April 15th 2013
Cornwall Half-Marathon, 1:35, April 27th 2013
18 marathons, 18 BQs since 2010
I haven't done a good progression run in a long time, btw. I'm due for one. But not this week, I think...
You need to rest up this week. Good job in Boston.
Uffda
Last year I was doing 1 piece of speed work a week, either a tempo run or an interval. I've switched it up and earlier on in my training I was doing Hills and a Pace run every week. Lately I've been doing a slightly slower "speed" run and a pace run every week.
I agree with the others though, 1 is fine to start with. After one training season I'd look at adding a second one.
- Andrew
Yep. Good stuff. Start with one day of a hard workout but you can still do strides on one or two other days.
Short term goal: 17:59 5K
Mid term goal: 2:54:59 marathon
Long term goal: To say I've been a runner half my life. (I started running at age 45).
Are we there, yet?
Once a week is fine for most runners. For tempo runs I'd suggest limiting them to 20 minutes at first and don't try to hit McMillan type pace, just run a bit harder than usual. As you get more used to them you can start increasing the pace to something approaching what McMillan would suggest based on your best recent race time. For intervals I suggest starting short and not too fast, maybe 8 x 200m at 5K race pace with a 200m jog recovery. Here you want to work your way up to where you can ran up to 10% of your weekly mile with about 5000m as an upper limit at 5K pace. Increasing the intervals to 400m, then 600m, etc until you're at a distance that takes you about 5 minutes to run. For many that might be 5 x 1000m, still at about 5K race pace. Once you start getting beyond 400m you want to start decresing your recovery relative to the interval distance. what I usually do is simply begin holding my recovery at 400m. There are a lot of variations, limited only by your imagination, because you can mix distances any way you want. You can even create a mixed interval workout with some at 5K race pace and longer intervals like 1200m or 1600m at tempo pace with short (100m - 200m) recovery.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K, 9:11:09 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Awesome. Good stuff. Thank you.