Early season hill workouts help to lay a solid foundation of strength and fitness that will set you up for success the rest of the season, whether you're aiming to run a fast mile, go the distance in an ultramarathon, or tackle something in between.
It’s hard to go wrong with 800m repeats. Do them fast enough and you’ll stay pretty sharp; do enough of them and the strength gains will take you a long way. An example of a pretty standard session many coaches will assign their athletes consists of six reps at 5K pace with 2 to 2-1/2 minutes recovery in between, or maybe 10 reps at 10K pace with two minutes recovery between the two-lap intervals—you get the idea. These workouts will help you build the specific strength you need for race day, practice getting your pacing down, and improve your overall efficiency. Every once in a while, however, I like to throw my athletes a curveball and have them switch gears halfway through, running the final 400m 4-5 seconds faster than the first.
While half marathons and marathons are a matter of resisting fatigue during the later miles, 5K and 10K racing is like fighting off a firestorm for the final third of the race. No matter how comfortable the early pace may feel to you, about two thirds of the way into a fast 5K or 10K a spark suddenly catches fire and starts to spread rapidly as your legs begin to lock up and your stride shortens ever so slightly. Your quads are screaming at you to stop and your upper body tenses up as you seemingly start going backward while you struggle to maintain pace or stick with the runner in front of you. There’s nothing wrong with any of this at the end of a hard race, of course; it simply means that you’re doing it right. While your muscles are inevitably going to catch fire toward the end of a competitive 5K or 10K effort, you can train your body to slow down the burn and better handle the demands of the race in training. One of my favorite ways to do this is with the descending ladder workout.
This is a great track workout to use early in a training block when re-introducing speed workouts into your weekly routine.
If you look at the training schedules of top runners throughout history it's more likely than not that you'll find regular bouts of tempo running in there. Why? Quite simply: They work. Tempo runs, which involve maintaining a steady effort for a prolonged period of time (e.g. 5-8 miles at 1/2 marathon effort or 10-14 miles at marathon effort), give you a lot of bang for your aerobic buck. It's hard, but not too hard, running that helps build aerobic strength, improve efficiency, and/or practice running race pace. The Tempo Plus workout is the leveling up of a standard tempo run by pairing it with a short set of faster intervals afterward.
The 3-2-1 Sandwich is a speed workout that will help runners improve their finishing kick.
In the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the myriad parallels between running and life, both of which, in my opinion, can be competitive pursuits for many of us. The idea I’ve spent the most time on is that of slowing down so that we can get more out of ourselves in the long run.
Most interval sessions are pretty straightforward in their construction: X number of [fill in the blank] intervals @ Y pace with Z recovery between repetitions. There's nothing wrong with these types of workouts. They're easy to understand and effective at producing a desired adaptation. Hammer intervals, made popular by coach Scott Simmons of the American Distance Project, throw a slight twist into the mix: every third or fourth repetition (whatever cadence you choose, really), you "hammer" it (i.e. run it quite a bit harder) before returning to the prescribed pace. The catch? You don't get any more recovery time after the hammers than you do the other intervals in the session.
This year's 127th Boston Marathon was my sixth time running the annual Patriots' Day event. It's going to take some time for me to process this one but I can say that it was the most fun, best executed Boston I’ve ever run. It’s such a hard race, even when it goes well.
