Speed + Distance

Are two vital components to any work-out regimine. Both have thier own benefits, as well as the similarity of helping anyone become a better runner. From the novive to the elite, our bodies and minds gradually becoming stronger as a result of such challenges.



Last Tuesday I drove up to the UNCW Track for a morning speed work-out. I usually have a good idea of what type of session I am going to do before I even get in the car... for that day what I had in mind was running alot of 400M repeats, ideally getting into the neighborhood of 14, 15 reps... and a couple more to boot. I base, or to be more accurate in many cases, copy my work-outs from those I find in magazines such as Running Times, or in some of the books that I have on the sport.



As soon as I had gotten out of the car and began jogging some slower warm-up laps I could tell that my legs felt tight, or heavier than I would like. Had gone for a solid two hour run Sunday morning, so I knew it was some residual "waste" in the body from that run; nonethless I was there (the track) and dressed, and decided to see how close I could get to completing the work-out that I had intended to do. There are times though running wise, especially when running on the roads/ trails that I will let my body/ mind dictate or change the length and speed of the run, by doing either or more or less of what I may have been planning to do.



But as alluded to ealier, I find on the track it to be a good idea to go with what I think I want to do, or I can give myself "justified" reasons for not attemtping or completing a certain speed session. With that I mind I set out to do the task at hand, telling myself the ideal goal will be 16 X 400M w/ 400m job between reps. Which i ended up completing, running the first eight reps in an average time of @ 1:25- 1:26, and the last eight in about 1:18- 1:19. Tooped it off with a cool down run around campus. Was a challenging work-out, the last several reps the lactic in my legs kicked in almost full bore right in the first 50M or so of the 400... but the work-out's purpose is to teach the body to be able to run thru such discomfort, and the number of reps designed to mimic if your will conditions faced by runners in longer races such as the marathon. Its not so much how fast each rep can be run, but being able to complete a large quantitty of repetitions that is of importance.



Next up more about distance running, and teaching/ training myself to run longer and longer amounts of time....