Stubbornness or persistence…

Over the past several weeks, I’ve included speed work in my running schedule. During my formative running years, the total distance in my speed workouts would be around 4,000M. It might be 10X400M or 20X200M. These days, I’ve been topping out my total at 3,200M and I’ve done either 4X800M or 2X1600M. I go with a little less total distance because I’m 43 and I don’t know the impact of adding on more intense training. If I knew I was likely to hit a new PR in a distance, I might go with more but I’m far off of my all-time bests so I’ll err on the side of preserving my running longevity.

Every one of my last three speed workouts has been a dud. One was due to wind. I was doing 4X800M and while I got the first two in under 3:00, they were slightly downhill with the wind at my back. The next two were in the opposite direction and were definitely not under 3:00 each.

The next workout was 2X1600M with a goal of 5:59 per 1600M. I’ve not done a running food review in a while but I can assure you that breaded fried fish fillets and tater tots are not good pre-run food. I wouldn’t have assumed they were, but I also figured I could grind through a speed workout. Nope. My first 1600M was 6:10 and it got worse from there.

For the next workout I attempted 2X1600M again. I went mid-morning and well after my breakfast of plain oatmeal and a banana. There was no wind and I figured hitting 5:59/1600M was reasonable. For the first one, I cruised through in 5:55. The next one was terrible. I was mulling over the reason and remembered that two days before, I’d done a six-mile run where I ran the last three miles fairly hard, with the final mile at under 5K race pace. Most likely I was carrying some leg fatigue with me from that run.

Were my disappointing times all due to external factors, or do I need to tweak what I’m doing? I’m leaning towards external factors though whether I try one of the same workouts next time, as opposed to 3X1000M, is still up for debate.

The broader point with this post is that it’s important to evaluate whether you need to keep trying at something, or reconfigure. Several years ago, I was doing speed workouts that focused on very short distances, such as 200M and 400M. These had worked in the past so I figured they would again. However, my times were only changing marginally. I switched to a strategy of doing primarily threshold work (running three or six miles all-out). I had also done this in the past with good results and I figured it would work again. My times did get faster so I stuck with it.

I’ve been including more true speed work (4X800M) because that also worked over the past year, in addition to threshold runs. It’s partly why I still think external factors are what affected my times before, and why I’m not quite ready to make a switch.

In many ways, running and training are going to be similar among athletes. Professional 5K/10K runners may log 80-100 miles per week but there will likely be subtle differences among them. Plans will be tailored and adjusted to accentuate strengths and shore up weaknesses. We also can be in an ongoing state of evaluation and experimentation to see what works best to keep us moving forward as fast as possible.