Follow up on Speed work for beginners

Follow up on Speed work for beginners

Hopefully I didn’t break any new runners!

I received a bunch of feedback from people on my two ‘speedwork for beginners’ articles from a couple weeks ago.  Many of them were very enthusiastic.  I can picture happy, excited newbies tramping down to their local high school track, doing a couple wind-sprints, maybe passing out, maybe regurgitating breakfast into the football pitch or maybe injuring themselves.  Then they would leave, disheartened, disillusioned and cursing my name under their breath.

Allow me this postscript. Not so much a retraction but a coloring, a fine-tuning, of my previous thoughts!

First, when I talk about using the track for speedwork I’m not talking about sprinting.  I’m talking about running faster in a controlled environment to help your long distance running.

I had some folks say they were going to go do some 100M work outs.  100M is really too short to get any good impact on your longer distance times.  In my humble opinion 400M is probably the shortest speedwork length that would have any impact on your long distance running.

I had suggested 100M as a starting point because some beginners may not have the strength to hold a good form for longer and I would rather you learn good form first than do the distance.  It takes 2-3 weeks for your muscles and balance to adapt to the speed work.  It’s ok to do the shorter repeats in these first couple weeks until your legs and mechanics are strong enough to take it a bit longer and get some good effect.

Once you have your strength and balance you can work on your threshold.  This is the point where you are breathing so hard you can’t talk.

The speedwork I recommended (which for me is a bit faster than 5k race pace) is to practice running, but more importantly holding form and pacing, at an effort level beyond your threshold.

The fast-tempo I recommended (which for me is at about a 5 mile {8K}race pace), gives you experience running right at the threshold point.

I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but, yes this is going to hurt.  It will always hurt, but you will learn how to manage the hurt and still perform.  Your body will play tricks on you to get you to stop.  Cramps, nausea, phantom pains – this is part of the learning process to push through this crap your body throws at you.

For example: I might be well into a hard 1600 and all of a sudden I’ll feel nauseous.  I think to myself “I’m going to be sick…”, but then I override that and say “fine, I’ll throw up but I’m not going to stop…” and then the nausea goes away.

Neither of these paces should be an all-out sprint.  You should be able to, as you get stronger, as you get used to it, hold these paces for 400M, 800M, 1200M and 1600M.  This is the point where you will start getting the amazing training effect from speedwork.

This work has two positive impacts on your threshold.  First, what you are doing is working to move your threshold so you can run faster for longer periods of time. Second, you are learning to manage the discomfort of running beyond your threshold so you can go deeper into the pain locker in races.

Going back to the interval distances, you can combine lots of shorter intervals, like 100M, into a larger workout to get the training effect.  To do this you would start the next interval before you have fully recovered from the first one.  In this way you are staying in a higher HR and effort zone for the total workout.

What’s the right distance?  It depends on your target race.  For a marathon distance I recommend 1600’s or mile repeats with a good recovery in between (2-4 minutes).  For me this recovery period happens to line up nicely with the time it takes me to jog a 400.

I will run the hard 4-lap 1600M interval then jog 400M to recover.  I find this has a nice rhythm.  I may take more time after the jog to do some light stretching or get a drink.  Then, when my HR has come down, I will take on the next one.

I have set my PR at the marathon, 10K and 5M distance after executing campaigns based on this 1600M speedwork approach.  You could probably get away with and certainly get benefit from an 800M based program.  For a 5K you could definitely use shorter 400M and 800M intervals.

What do you get out this type of campaign?

–        Strength and balance and fast-pace form.

–        Moving your threshold

–        Ability to close a race and not die at the end

–        Mental strength to know that you can deal with discomfort and still perform

Here’s the schedule I used.  You can change it for your needs, I was training for BQ efforts.  6 days of running a week.  5+ mile base runs. Sunday long, Tuesday Speed, Thursday Fast tempo.  Working up from 1 mile of speed and 2 miles of fast tempo to 5 miles of speed and 8 miles of fast tempo.

Hope this helps you.  So stop swearing at me, suck it up and go back to the track to get your speedwork done.