Message posted by: Sasha C.

Hi I’ve been reading posts here for a couple of months, and the thing that puzzles me the most is the number of people writing in who argue that speed training for running is somehow secondary to long slow work. I see sentences like, “You only need speed for a quarter IMan,” or “You need two years of base.” I used to train a bit with a guy who runs ultra marathons (50-100 miles) at an elite level, and he did speed twice a week. Speed is where you get better. Speed strengthens your muscles and heart, it trains you to clear lactic acid, it toughens you mentally, and perhaps most important for an Iron Man competitor, it teaches your body to run smoothly and EFFICIENTLY. Long slow runs without at least some sort of speed each week will eventually produce a shambling slow stride. It seems to me, (I am not yet even a novice triathlete, so you’re welcome to trash this) that tri training actually would allow more emphasis on speed, not less. If you do hard intervals one day ru
nning, you probably need a day or so of recovery before running hard again. But a triathlete can hit the pool the next day and work a (mostly) different set of muscles. One thing that happens to lots of runners is that they keep saying, “I’m working on my base, and when I feel strong enough, I’ll add speed.” This results in a very low ceiling of achievement. Months spent running slowly mean that it’s all the harder to persuade your body to adapt to a quicker,lower, longer, lighter stride. Furthermore speed builds strength faster ANYWAY. After six weeks or so of running, if you’re not doing any speed, you’re not realy getting the best out of your workouts, partly because you’re never really pushing, partly because you don’t learn what you’re cqapable of, and largely from the boredom you don’t even know you’re feeling. It is a fabulous sensation when a 12 or 15 mile run feels like a rest day in comparison to intervals on the track, or cruise intervals in the woods. That’s
when you know you’re getting somewhere.

To view the rest of the post, please log-in to www.ontri.com