In March I really slacked off, and I didn't do a single workout focused on speed. (Perhaps it would be more accurate to say "speed" as regular readers know that I'm not fast even at my fastest paces.) The first week of the month I was in taper mode; the second week of the month I was in recovery mode; the third week of the month I was still feeling a bit on the tired side. I think the tiredness that third week was from a combination of still feeling some lag after the half-marathon, feeling rather hungry a fair bit of the time as I adjusted to my first week of counting points on Weight Watchers Online, and the return to early mornings and classes. However, the rest of the month I just let myself be lazy.
I really felt it, too, when I did my virtual 5 by the 5th run last Tuesday. I not only ran my 5k eleven seconds slower than I did in February, I was sucking air pretty much the whole time from the effort of trying to run faster than normal. I'm going to sound like Captain Obvious here, but it really drove home the importance of regularly integrating speed into my weekly running routine if I truly want to post faster race times.
Back at the beginning of March, I was thinking that I needed to find some new speed workouts as I had been doing a lot of 800 repeats, but it looks like I'm back to close to square one with those. I know their going to be challenging, but I'm actually kind of looking forward to the renewed novelty of running 800s here again in a couple of days.
Do you regularly integrate speed work into your training? What are some of your favorite workouts focused on speed?
I haven't used speed as much as I like to here lately. I'm trying to get back into it, but it's hard! I was sore for days after my last speed workout! lol Best of luck to you!! :0)
ReplyDeleteI am going to work on doing more speed work. It seems impossible to me to have enough energy for speed and long runs (and hill repeats and tempo runs and don't forget to switch up those surfaces so you hit the trail and track, too).
ReplyDeleteLove to hear about it if you find any fun/easy speed workouts!
You are right...we need those workouts in there for improvement. I'd be happy to share some fun workouts with you if you'd like them--just email!
ReplyDeleteI've been doing "Tempo Tuesdays" each Tuesday on training plan. I've found some Tuesdays I enjoyed it (like today) and other Tuesdays I wasn't fond of it. :)
ReplyDeleteI would love to be the kind of runner who regularly works on speed, but frankly, I'm lucky if I get three running work-outs into a week. It's just not a priority for me...but I will say that my biking may give me some of those benefits, as I am often motivated to pedal hard up hills or on long stretches of open road just to get some speed going. Of course it's not identical to a running speed work-out, but because I bike so much, perhaps it happens frequently enough to accumulate the physiological benefits :-)
ReplyDeleteWhen I ran with a run club, we did speed workouts during the final 1/3 of marathon training season. But when I ran alone? I never did speed workouts. My favorite are yassos! Not sure if that counts as speed work but it felt like it to me!
ReplyDeleteI don't regularly integrate speed into my workouts, but I do a LOT of hills, and they seem to translate to speed. There is a running group that does speed workouts, and I might go to my first workout this Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteFor the first 12 weeks of my training for the marathon, I did speed work once a week, but for the last 6, I did not do any speed work. I always do at least one day of hill workouts as well, which I also think are great for making you have stronger legs and in turn making you faster. If you hate speed work, maybe hill work would be better? When I do speed work, I like to do Yassos!
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