Huffing and Puffing
I have a love hate relationship with getting faster. On one hand I love the feeling of running fast easily, on the other hand running fast easily comes at a price: a huffing, puffing, sweaty, painful kind of price.
The last two days I've done "speed work" or in my case "a little-faster-than-plodding work" (I'm not sure it qualifies as "speed" yet). If you're not familiar with "speed work" it traditionally means running intervals at "race pace" or slightly faster than race pace. Intervals can vary depending on the distance you are training for. Typically if you're training for a 5K race your training intervals will be 200m, 400m, 800m and 1200m (or 1/8th of a mile, a 1/4 of a mile, 1/2 mile and 3/4 of a mile). If you're training for a marathon you will often do mile interval repeats, for example one mile at "marathon race pace" followed by a jogging or walking rest, then a repeat of another mile at race pace.
"Race pace" is the minute per mile pace that you typically run during a race. In the past my 5K race pace has peaked at a seven-minute-mile (keep in mind that I was 20 lbs lighter than I am now and was in the process of training for a marathon). I'm nowhere close to that now, but my goal is to get back there. So for the last few days I've headed to the gym to run intervals on the treadmill (I know…the GYM! And I said I was going to wait, but that type-A part of me was really craving numbers: pace, distance--the treadmill fed my addiction). I started on Tuesday with 400m (1/4 mile) repeats. I spent 10 minutes warming up at a comfortable jog, then ran 400m at a challenging pace, jogged another 400m to rest, then ran another 400m. I wanted to do at least four repeats but two was enough (plus I was running out of time). So I cooled down and called it a day. Normally you rest after a "speed work" day, but I was feeling good on Wednesday and headed to the gym again and did 800m (1/2 mile) repeats at a still-challenging pace but slightly slower than Monday's pace. These were killers! I so wanted to stop after a 1/4 mile; a half-mile is just enough to push the limits of being uncomfortable. But that's the key to getting faster, pushing that limit of what your feel like you can do. And the great thing is, pushing yourself to the limit always pays off. Speed work always make regular runs easier.
It will take me a while to get back to seven-minute miles; there's going to be a lot of huffing, puffing, sweat and pain between here and there. But I think that's what I love about running: little challenges, little victories, always training to improve.
