Running on speed January 26, 2007
Posted by regivizz Fitness, Running
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Thursdays. Speed training.
I ran 4 miles upping my rate of perceived exertion to about an 8 out of 10 in 1 minute intervals. My legs felt like jelly (that’s jelly, not jelly bellys) afterwards, and I felt great but a tad disappointed. It seems to me that by speeding up during part of the run that I would have a much lower average for each mile. Not so. Rationally I know it’s because in between the faster stretches I’m slowing down quite a bit, but I only knocked about 10 seconds per mile off of my time.
Is this about what I should expect?
Asics: 14 so far this week, 108 total
Comments
Well, here is where my geekiness takes over.
As far as knowing how hard I work, I turn to the heart rate monitor, even if I’m in pain, if I’m lower than what my goal is, I try to crank it up.
Also, with Nike+ it gives you instantaneous pace, so you can run for a mile and know your actual pace. Plus when you get back you can see your actual slow/start times.
I think the entire idea of speed training is to get your body used to/comfortable to running fast, then it becomes commonplace and your overall pace increases.
I agree with Eric on this. For me, speed training seems to help by convincing my legs that they can run faster. If I do it enough, then when I try to run “fast” but not as fast as I ran during my speed session, my legs are saying “hey, I’ve run faster than this before… this is no big deal”.
So for me, my progression has gone from 10min/miles feeling “easy” and 11min/miles feeling “slow”… to 9:30miles “feeling fast”… to running speed sessions at 7:30 min/miles and feeling like “wow I couldn’t possibly run any faster than that”…
Now though, I’m at a point where 7:45 feels “easy”, 8:00 feels incredibly slow… 6:58 “feels fast” and my “wow I couldn’t possibly run any faster than that” speed is more like 5:20/mile.
I am sure that speed sessions plus trying to run most of my training runs at my “feeling fast” speed… (tempo)… is what has made this possible.
But to your point… when you run intervals/speed sessions, what would your AVERAGE speed be for the session… Well, for my track workouts that I described in one of my comments to your earlier post. I end up averaging around (but sometimes slower than) my “tempo” pace or my normal training pace… This is most certainly because of the recovery laps being done at a much much much slower pace. I might run a 400 at 5:20 pace and then run a 400 recovery lap at 11:00 pace. Well, if you do that 2 times (2 laps at 5:20 and 2 laps at 11:00), you’ve taken 8:10 to run a mile.
Anyway, keep it up, it sounds like you’re making progress and having fun, and that’s what really matters!
my easy general rule is to do 80% endurance running - slow speed, small steps - 20 % interval running - run 2 minutes at 80% capacity, walk 2 minutes - this teaches my muscles how to go faster while maintaining/developping my endurance.