Easing into Speed Work

Making the un-approachable approachable

When you first start speedwork at the track it is going to feel very foreign to you.  If you’ve never done it before your legs and body won’t know what to do.  You have to ease into it and not lose hope.  Like everything else it takes time for your body to figure it out.  It never gets easy.  That’s not the point.  It gets manageable and known.

This past week I made my way down to my local track where I have been doing my speedwork for 20 years.  This was a different type of adventure.  Due to some limitations I haven’t been able to do speedwork for over a year.

When I say speedwork, I mean running faster than is comfortable for some distance or time.  In my case I’m usually referring to a 1600 at the track.

Here’s the thing.  I haven’t tried to run ‘fast’, or ‘faster’ or ‘fast for me’ for long enough that I didn’t really know what to expect.

Before the physiological challenges of the last couple years I knew about where I was.  I knew about what I was capable of.  I won’t bore your with paces because what is a pace for me is for me and what is a pace for you is for you and any time I start calling out specific paces or race times I’m bound to make someone sneer with derision or scowl with inadequacy.

For the race marathon times I was running before a bout of physical decrepitude knocked me sideways I know what speed and tempo should be.

I’ll give you an easy rule of thumb.  Take your goal marathon race pace and subtract 1:30 from it.  That is what you can aspire to run a 1600 in on your local track for speedwork.   Do the same math, and subtract a minute from your goal race pace and that’s your target tempo pace.

For purely academic purposes, let’s say your goal pace is an 8 minute mile for a 3:30 marathon try.  A good target for you will to be able to run a 1600 in 6:30 for speed and a 1600 in 7:00 for tempo.

I’m not going to go into my theories on speedwork and 1600’s here and why it is essential if you want to race faster. I’ve written scads of words on the website.

What I want to focus on here is how to ease into that speedwork.  For me, coming back into it after a few years, was like starting from scratch almost and I was able to notice things as I was doing it that may be useful to you.

If you’ve never done it these paces may seem absurd and frankly I don’t know what you’re capable of but I’ll give you some steps to get you as close as you can.

Expect it to take at least 3 weeks for your body to figure out speedwork.  The mechanics are different.  The muscles being used are different.  Like when you started running you have to give your machine a chance to adapt.

Think of it as an experiment.  Think of it as a learning experience.  Think of it as play.

Warm up well.

Run at least 4 laps of the track or 10 minutes before you do anything else.  Run your warmup at an easy pace.  Have patience.

Stretch

Commit to a good, deep stretching routine after your warmup and before your workout.  Calves, Achilles, Hamstrings, Quadriceps, Hips, Abductors and Glutes.  Take your time and relax into the stretches. I hold these stretches for at least a minute.

Start with a couple laps of speed drills.  See my post on speed drills or look on youtube.  I use Butt-Kicks, High-Skipping, Bounding, Striders, Backwards and Sideways running drills.  These will start to wake up the fast twitch muscles and warm up those different bits that are needed for speed.

Don’t start with a 1600.  Start with a 400.  Do a set of 4 or five 400’s at you target speed pace the first time out.  Focus on form and stride.  Notice how your body reacts to speed.  Is your stride length longer?  Are you more forward on the balls of your feet?

Keep moving after the 400.  Run through the finish and jog another lap to cool down.  When you’re back to your starting place stop and stretch a little.  Evaluate how it felt.  Get a drink from your bottle.  When your heart rate has settled down ease into the next 400 and do it all again.

The point of these is not so much training and conditioning as it is learning what speed feels like and how to hold that pace.  The key decision point in any of these is not whether you are tired or your legs hurt.  The key decision point is when your form breaks.  If you feel your form break you stop.  The key is to learn the pace and the form and you can’t do that if your form breaks – even if you can ‘gut it out’.

When you’ve completed 4-5 400’s run 4 laps to cool down and stretch again.  We all have the tendency to skip stretching. Give yourself the gift of stretching here because it will make everything else so much easier and pain free.  If you wait until something hurts it may be too late.

This may be a short workout for you, but with all the drills and recovery laps it will round up to about 5 miles.  Notice how you feel that night.  Notice how your body feels the next day.

Do two sessions per week separated by either a rest day or an easy, recovery run.

The seond session should be a tempo session.  The protocol is the same, but since you are running a bit slower you can try for 800’s instead of 400’s and see if you can do 4 of those.

Repeat this the second week but try to increase to 800’s for speed and 1200’s for tempo.

Repeat this for the third week but see if you can get to the 1600’s.  You can be off the target pace by plus or minus 5 seconds as long as the form doesn’t break and you’re consistent.

What you will find is that either your legs or your lungs will go first.  If you have been running for a while but have not done speed work you’ll find that your legs go before your lungs.  You have fitness, but lack strength.

This is one of the think you want to learn.  Why are you unable to hold the pace? Why are you slowing down? Is it your heart and lungs or is it your legs.  This information will tell you what you need to work on.  These may trade places as you get into shape and your body learns the speed.

At my first speedwork session last week I found I couldn’t hold the pace for the second 1600 at speed and my form started to break so I pulled up at the 1200 mark.  But I also discovered that my lungs and heart were ok with the effort and my legs just have to come around.

I’ve given myself a 3-week trial to see if I can ease into speed and tempo and also see what paces are achievable and what paces are aspirational.

The days after my first speedwork session I ran my normal 5.35 mile home road loop that I have run so many hundreds of times over the last 20 years.  I baselined it before the speed session and then after.

After the speed session I felt light and strong.  I ran 3-4 minutes faster than the baseline without trying.

That’s the why.  You do speed work to make the rest of your runs easier.  It’s like putting down a weight – you just get faster.

If you’re speedwork curios give yourself 3 weeks and ease into it.  Do it as an experiment.  Do it as a learning exercise.   If you find that your body responds you can then build a training plan around rigorous and consistent speedwork to take many minutes off of your race times of any distance.