Pushin P

If you ask someone who may have had a negative experience with running, the answer might be “it was too tough”.  Tough could mean anything, but a common answer for why the run felt tough was due to the run being at an effort that was too hard.

“Go slow to go fast”. It’s true. We are probably running our easy runs too fast. If you follow many elite distance runners, you will see that their easy runs are probably at a pace similar to yours, if not slower. 

But that is only part of the puzzle.

At some point on your running journey, you will hopefully want to take another step in your development and run a faster PR.

Keeping your easy runs easy is one of the keys to achieving your goal. The other is speedwork.

Benefits of speedwork.

The good news is that the mix between easy and hard is favourable. 80-20 (80% of your weekly volume is easy, 20% is hard) is a typical ratio to follow so we don’t have a ton of hard efforts to do weekly.

This being said, despite less volume, regular speed work has a significant positive impact on the body.  Faster running uses different muscle groups and strengthens your muscles and bones.  As you continue to build running fitness, your body adapts, muscles and bones get stronger and can adjust to greater volumes of running and intensity.

Another added benefit is improved running form.  As mentioned above, speedwork will use different muscle groups, and the benefit is that as your muscles get stronger, your form will adapt to the changes as well. Better form = better efficiency as you run.

Easy running builds up our aerobic capacity - our ability to sustain an effort (running for an extended period of time). Speed work harnesses your aerobic capacity and improves the ability to push on your sustained efforts. You're essentially channeling your inner Dominic Torreto and tuning up your engine to become fast and furious. 

Now, before you go out and tune up your engine, understand that not all speedwork is equal. 200m or 30-40 second efforts would provide a different benefit from 800m or 3-4 minute efforts, but the combination of the above in different forms throughout a base building or race preparation period will help to get you ready to perform physically and mentally on race day.

Understanding the difference between easy and hard efforts in running is a great step towards ensuring that the next time you go out the door for a run is not your last time. 

Workout Of The Week

On/Off 300's

Start with your regular warm up, from there you'll go into 6-8 sets of 300m at a 5k effort followed by 300m recovery jog (keep this easy, and keep moving!). 1 set = 300m on and 300m off.

This is a great (tought) Tempo workout, and you can mix up the variations of this workout depending on when in your season you are doing it.

See you next week.

J P