Speed and recovery workout | PUM Day 22

3 days ago (Edited)

Hi all welcome back!

Instinctively you would expect that if your goal is to run a marathon, you should train to run long distances training runs as fast as possible so you will improve and get stronger every time. Due to the recovery time your body needs to rebuild itself after a intense longrun this instinct is not correct - or atleast not as efficient as it could be.

If you are mixing light and heavy runs you can get more miles in your week, while using less energy. While fast long runs can have a place in a training schedule you would probably benefit from using longruns as a way to get familair with the time on the feet and trying to improve your running efficiency. Shorter fast runs are less taxing on the body so you could do them more often. If you are struggling with getting a good training schedule, I highly recommand reading "Advanced Marathoning"
by Pete Pfitzinger

During my training block I didn't really focus on speedworks, but focussed on running on different types of unpaved terrain. But today it was time to do some speedwork - garmin was giving me interval suggestions for days as recommanded training

Looking at the focus of the trainingtypes from last month, it is fair that I should had given it a little more attention. Where the Easy and Hard runs are well beyond the suggested optimum, the focus on anaerobe exercise is less than 1/30 of the others (and well below optimum) Time to get to work!

Before today's training

After today training

Today's run
I wanted to improve both my running efficiency aswell as some focus on speed.
Therefore I decided to do a 12.5KM run in which I would:

warmup 1 KM
4 KM slow run (137BMP) in which I would do 5 dashes of 200 meters at 80-90% power - after the 200m sprint I get back to basic speed and try to get my heartbeat under control asap. New Dash starts as soon as my heartbeat is 137 bpm.
5 KM slow run (137 BMP) with every 500M, 100M dash at 85-90% power. Meaning 100M fast, 400 Meter slow (repeat 10x).
2,5 KM cooling down (at 137 bpm)

My speed varied between 11.4 km/h to 21.9 km/h. It did felt good to incorporate it - although I also feel it a bit more on my knees compared to a tempo run. But it was definitly fun and will aim to incorporate this type of runs in my schedule atleast once a week.