The decline in interval work started as a way to not re-injure myself. I found I kind of liked skipping them though. I ran hills, because our trails aren't flat, ran hard up Towers every other week, ran tempo runs on the road fairly often, it's not like I totally ignored speed. Running a lot of miles you can fake it relatively well, as long as you aren't trying to bang out a sub-3 hour marathon or something crazy like that. I ran a 5K PB last April on no speed work, for example. But I haven't been running a lot of miles recently. And faking it is getting tougher. My T&H 5K last weekend, even without the missed turn, was not a PB. Was not within 3 minutes of a PB.
My Tuesday evening runs have me starting 1/2 mile from the CSU track, and I got a little push by Alex mentioning he was doing some 800s yesterday, so I did it. I went to the track. And it wasn't as bad as I remembered. I started small, 2x400, 4x800, and 2x400 last night. Faster than I normally run for sure, but I probably can take off 15-20 seconds from my 800s with a little more focus and grit. I plan on keeping the Tues night intervals on the schedule, hopefully the speed comes back as fast as I remember it does. Someday next May I'll be running down the Poudre Canyon and I'll look back on last night and think, "that was a good idea". Right?
Definitely a good idea Brian, nothing like some time on the track to put some turn over in your legs. But I think it is the grit that it takes to push it and run in that uncomfortable that is biggest benefit of speed work on the track.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a time goal for CM?
sub-4:00
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