Posts Tagged ‘speed work’

Wednesday Night at the East 6th St Track

9, Jul 2009

Some good workouts spaced a little too far apart, add in some work/life craziness and some unlucky injuries and that’s about where I am right now with my half marathon training program. I have no doubt i’ll be able to get through the distance at a comfortable pace, but I can feel the speed I worked so hard to build up slipping out from under me.

It kind of sucks but I just have to keep telling myself that I’ve made some amazing gains this year and that when I need to get serious about running again its not going anywhere. That being said I had a pretty good run yesterday.

  • 2.5 mile slow tempo run to the east 6th track
  • 2 sets each of pull-ups, dips and push-ups at the fitness park
  • 4×400’s averaging 1:16
  • 2 more sets each of pull-ups, dips and push-ups
  • Then a cool-down 2.5 mile jog on the way back

I bumped into @runanskyrun at the track, he was training with the Paragon group. They run a weekly Wednesday night speed session there. I’ve never seen the track so busy, and although it was somewhat challenging to do speed-work while sharing the track with about 200 people, it was pretty cool to be around so many enthusiastic runners.

J

From Speed-work To Improved Fitness

12, May 2009

Allen G. of Boston Or Die Trying (allen-g.blogspot.com) asked a great question in the comments section of my recent post on Interval Training – www.nycin310.com/?p=476. Here is his question…

  • About how long does it usually take for one to realize interval benefits? Just finishing marathon recovery and getting ready for a race next weekend, and I’m wondering if speed workouts this coming week will even help.

Short Answer – You won’t see the benefits of this week’s workout in this weekend’s race.

Long Answer – After a good deal of researching on the internet, I found some great resources online that I’d like to share with everyone. Basically, what we’re talking about here is the process of supercompensation. According to Wikipedia: “In training theory, supercompensation is the post training period during which the trained function/parameter has a higher performance capacity than it did prior to the training period.”

It’s an incredibly simple concept. You do a hard workout, your body recovers and then builds in some additional fitness in anticipation of having to perform similar strenuous activity in the near future. In graph form, it looks something like this…

File:Supercompensationgraph.JPG

Once I started researching supercompensation, I expected to find a bunch of vague descriptions of how long the process takes. Fortunately, Pete Pfitzinger (author, coach and exercise physiologist) has narrowed down the variables and offers up a chart that gives some pretty conclusive insight into just how long the recovery and supercompensation process takes…

Interval Training For the 5/16 Healthy Kidney 10k

5, May 2009

At lunch time today I ran intervals, alternating back and forth between almost a full on sprint and a brisk walk. After running half mile and quarter mile splits (400M / 800M) for the last couple weeks, I tried running 600 meter intervals this time, which I found to be an excellent mix for speed and distance.

If you haven’t done the math already, a mile is 1600 meters. Normally, I like to cover about 3 miles in total running distance while interval training for a 5k or 10k race. So today, on the treadmill, I ran eight separate 600 meter intervals (0.375 miles each) with approximately 60 to 90 seconds of walking in-between them.

I enjoy running intervals on the treadmill much more than on the track, or on the road. I figure if you’re going to be training at close to your maximum speed, it makes sense that you’d want to do it as safely and measurably as possible. The treadmill is better on the joints, and you can avoid that repetitive stress of making four consecutive turns each time you run a lap around a track.

Here’s a pretty basic video explaining treadmill intervals…

Now that you’re an expert on intervals, assuming you weren’t already, here’s the good stuff…

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…

Friday Hill Work

24, Apr 2009

Did some quick hill work at lunch time today, starting off with a slow first mile at a 2% incline and progressing to a 6:30 pace at a 4% grade by the 3rd mile. Finished off with 1000M at 6:00 pace and then the treadmill mysteriously shut down. Not sure why it did, but I think it was the ghost of Prefontaine telling me not to over do it.

I’m feeling the early onset of some shin splints so I’ll do my best to avoid running on both Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn’t mind getting in a few hours of outdoor biking on one of those days.

Then on Monday there’s my fitness assessment, where I finally get my VO2 reading. After the assessment I’d like to head over to the East 6th track for 12 x 400M speed work.

J

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.

East River Track

28, Mar 2009

Had a great workout today, second time running outdoors this year thanks to the half decent weather. Lauren and I jogged from the Financial District up to East River Park which is about 2.5 Miles one way. There’s an awesome track located right off of the FDR at about East 6th street…


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