Quality above quantity

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When you start training, your times improve quickly at first, but then there is a plateau. If you are competitive and want to get faster, you have to work on speed. It will not happen running the same 5k track, time and time again. Same in swimming and biking, you have to do speedwork. I will here focus on how I have improved my speed in running.

I reason like this: if I want to run an 8.30 mile, I have to train at 8.30 speed or faster. I just can't keep it up for 5k (3.1 miles) yet. So I use the treadmill, where I can control and force the speed.

First, and very important, I need a good warm-up. I start at walking speed for 1 minute, then increase to a slow jog for a minute. After that I press the button for an increase in speed every 15 seconds. After a total of about 8 minutes, I am faster than my competition speed. How fast you force yourself, is individual, but I run a normal 5k (3.1 miles) on a triathlon a little above 9 minutes/mile. (On a regular 5k race, I am faster). So I top out the last 15 seconds on my treadmill warm-up around an 8 minute/mile, that is my individual max speed.



Then I rest and recover before the real training starts. This is to run 1 mile on the treadmill as fast as I can. I usually start the speed below 9 minutes/mile, but I then press the speed button every 2 minutes of so. I make sure I can sustain the increase in speed, I aim to end faster than I started. The last around two minutes, I give it all. This is very hard, mentally and physically, and my pulse hits 180 and above.  

I rest and recover again, and then I do various shorter speed excercises, sometimes half a mile at 8.30 speed, and/or 2 minutes at even faster speeds for a total of around 3 miles, including warm-up. There is no exact scheme how to do this, listen to your body. The aim is to run at competition speed or faster, distance is secondary, although each attempt should be a few minutes in duration.

After speed work-outs, especially if I do several over a few weeks, my 5k speed always improves. My 10k speed also improves. In contrast, when I do longer workouts at a slower speed, my speed, even on shorter distances decrease. 

Yes, long runs makes me slower. If you train slow, you will be slow.

Quality is more important than quantity to improve results.






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