The Boy and I are continuing our prep work for the 2012 Cowtown Marathon. Seven weeks and counting!
Seven weeks means there’s plenty of time for some additional long endurance runs and speed training to improve our overall performance.
Side note: I hate speed work.
Correction: I HATE SPEED WORK.
I’d say I feel better for saying that, but I don’t. Why not? Because I know I still have two more speed work sessions to go before marathon time.
Speed work involves running at a faster-than-normal pace for a mile, walking a bit to recover, then running at a faster-than-normal pace for another mile. (You continue this for how ever many miles are on your personal training schedule.) Running geeks: Yes, I realize this is also called tempo running. Either way, it stinks.
Because the truth is that speed work is ok for the first mile or two. But for the next three, four, and … it really is awful. Eventually, you feel like you want to throw up. Fortunately, I haven’t yet. Give me time.
We were both too tired from football fun and festivities to do our speed work over the weekend. That’s how I found myself running-until-I-wanted-to-puke at The Boy’s office at 5:45 am on a workday.
Workday morning runs are hectic – it’s hard to remember to pack your lunch, all of your work necessities, plus all of your workout things. I managed to arrive at the gym with my clothes but without my iPod.
Bummer.
There’s not much worse than having to run-until-I-want-to-puke without any music to keep me from thinking about running or puking.
Double bummer.
Midway through our runs, other folks arrived to squeeze in a pre-work morning workout. I was too focused on not puking – or falling off the treadmill – to do much more than glance when they walked in.
But we had a chance to exchange pleasantries later in the locker room. One of the girls told me,
If only she knew.
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OK, I'll bite …
TEMPO runs are generally longer distances run at a steady, hard pace. Distance and speed tend to depend on the race for which you are training. A tempo run in preparation for a half marathon, might range from 3-6 miles at 25 seconds per mile slower than 5K pace.
REPEATS are specific distances with recovery times between each fast segment. The recovery times are generally set times/distances proportional to the fast segment, say 2-4 times the time spent running the fast segment. Often one comes close to fully recovering during the recovery segment. The goal is to maintain a consistent quality in each fast segment.
INTERVALS actually refers to the recovery period but often refers to a workout similar to REPEATS but without full recovery. The recovery time would be equal to or less than the fast segment time. Interval training really raises your anaerobic fitness because you're working at a deficit.
FARTLEKS are also a useful speedwork tool but are generally less structured than the other 3. Another common term is "pick-ups". One just runs a bit faster at various points in a "normal" run but it lets one do speedwork and, more useful for me, fartleks break the monotony of a steady pace and keep me from falling into a trap of running all my runs at a single pace.
It seems to me that Bob is the one who's hard core. 🙂
We'd love to do a run with you the next time you're stateside. Though probably Kelly would run with you and I'd be somewhere near the back!