Speeding Things Up

With race season in the triathlon world on its way, it time to start working on some speed in my training rather than the strength and endurance workouts I’ve been doing for the last 8 weeks or so. As part of my periodised training plan I’m moving from the strength and endurance phase into a speed / race phase.

This means shorter, sharper, more intense workouts interspersed with a few longer sessions here and there. I did my first fast run at the weekend, the first time in months that I’ve done any intervals above race pace. Going fast always feels good no matter what mode of transport – even plain old running can feel good when you are going at a decent pace.

My workout was:

• 10 min warm up
• 3x 0.5 miles at Race pace (6:00 -6:15 min/mile) with 0.5 mile recovery run
• 6x 0.2 miles at above race pace (faster than 5:50 min/mile) with 90 secs recovery
• cool down.

I actually ended up doing the 0.2 mile fast efforts at closer to 5:15-5:30 min/mile pace which felt really good. If only I could keep that up for a full 5k! The thing is, the only way to get faster is to start running faster so although these are only short efforts the idea is that they get me used to running at that speed and eventually with enough training I’ll be able to keep that speed up for longer.

It’s all well and good training at below race pace on longer runs to build base, strength and endurance and over time these sessions mean that running that distance at that pace become easier. They also prepare your body for the more intense workouts needed during a speed phase and therefore hopefully mean that you are less likely to get injured whilst doing these hard, high intensity efforts. They don’t however increase your speed, so it’s now time to change gear a little and start adding training stress in the form of speed and intensity.

This will of course hurt, but lets hope it works.