Posts Tagged ‘interval runs’

Some Thoughts on Quarter Mile Intervals

30, Apr 2009

What a busy week so far. With my birthday festivities on Tuesday and a “recovery day” on Wednesday, I haven’t even had a chance to post thoughts on my workout from Monday. Monday’s training was the first time I’ve run quarter mile splits since I committed to doing intervals as part of my program. Over the past few months, I’ve spent some time working on full mile and half mile splits, but never 400’s.

Since I ran after completing my fitness assessment, I was a little spent before I even started. I guess 18 steeply uphill minutes of VO2 testing on the treadmill will do that to you. But I found the quarter mile splits were actually a lot of fun, as far as ‘fun’ goes in running anyway. Its a short enough distance where you have the chance to really run all out, and as you approach the final stretch of each interval, you can feel fatigue beginning to set in. But before it does, the split is over and you have a quick minute to walk it off and recover…

Training Knowledge Is Power, Arm Yourself

23, Apr 2009

I have to hand it to my Mom, she’s forwarded me two great articles in the last 3 days. Yesterday’s New York Times included a story titled “Want to Go Faster? You Need a Trainer.” It speaks to exactly what I said in yesterday’s post. You can’t just go out running or go to the gym and hope that your persistence and dedication will pay off. You need to learn how to TRAIN. There are two ways to do this… 1) Have someone else guide you by joining a running club or hiring a coach / trainer. 2) Read everything running related that you can get your sweaty hands on.

Seriously, if you want to get better and you’re not training with a purpose, with specificity in mind… you probably won’t get much better. If you don’t go into every workout knowing which system(s) of your body that you are stressing and conditioning, then your probably not doing much of either. It’s a simple concept, but in the last few months it’s really hit home with me. And I’m running my best times ever…

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article, the rest can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/health/nutrition/23best.html

Want to Go Faster? You Need a Trainer
By GINA KOLATA

IF anyone ever wondered whether it was talent or sustained systematic training that makes athletes so good, they need only look at Joshua Gordon, a professional mediator in Boston.

Mr. Gordon ran cross-country in college before stopping completely to take up baseball. Six years later, in 1999, he decided, almost as a lark, to run the Boston Marathon. He joined a program to learn how to run longer distances, a process that involved gradually increasing the length of his runs and focusing only on distance, not speed.

FIRST Training

12, Apr 2009

I’ve blogged previously about my evolution into a 3-day a week runner. I don’t take off on non-running days, I just substitute in weight lifting and cardio machines. I’m not sure how I stumbled across my formula, but something tells me I must have read about the FIRST training program and subconsciously incorporated it into my routine. FIRST stands for “Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training” and it’s the foundation of my new favorite running book Run Less Run Faster (B. Pierce, S. Murr, R. Moss).

I’m only half way through the book, but I get it. The training principles are for runners who are eager to put in quality workouts, but are injury prone. That’s me. The concepts addressed in Run Less Run Faster are so simple and intuitive, here it is in a nutshell: “To race fast you need to train fast, but if you train fast, you need to build in substantial recovery time or you risk career halting injury.” That’s it… kind of.


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