"Training to Not Be Injured" vs "Good Training"

After a surprisingly slow 10K at the end of April and then a slightly slower than anticipated 5K last week, it was obviously time to ponder my training a bit. And it didn't take long to figure something out as it was something I'd been thinking about since mid-winter:

I haven't been "mixing up" my training much, and although I've had some SOLID and CONSISTENT training, it's been training that has been keeping me injury-free. It has NOT been training to make me super fast.

Once I got over my little calf snafu last May, I've been doing pretty much the same long run with the same "style" of effort for the last year: 10-12 miles total with about 6 miles "at pace" in the middle. I keep getting Facebook memories of doing long runs with the stroller when I might go just as far as I've been going, but I'll only do 3 or 4 miles harder (and a fair amount faster as well!). Doing the same "safe" long run workout for really the last 4 years or so has helped keep me injury free (as my body likes mixing up the pace and running KINDA hard but not KILLER hard), but it hasn't been giving me the race results that I have hoped for.

So on yesterday's long run (which was my first "real" workout since the 5K a week ago), I mixed it up. I went back to a version of an old workout that Coach Jen gave me 13 years ago when I was shooting for my sub-60 TC 10 Mile. It was a simple fartlek workout. I don't remember the exact details of her workout, but it was random minutes of effort (between 1 and 5 minutes) with then 50% of the effort time taken as running easy before the next one: for example, after running 4 minutes hard, you run 2 minutes easy. I've done this a number of times since working with Coach Jen, and I ended up making the easy runs a bit longer on the "odd" minutes: instead of 1.5 mins easy after 3 mins of running hard, I round up the easy running to 2 mins. (I always round up to the nearest minute in other words.)

So I did harder efforts of 3, 2, 4, 1, and 5 minutes, with easy running of 2, 1, 2, and 1 min after the first 4, and then a longer break after the 5 minute effort before starting it all over again. My Garmin takes half mile splits automatically, and here you can see my splits from this workout:

Red efforts of 3, 2, 4, 1, and 5 minutes, then a longer rest before repeating again.


I ran "out" about 5.5 miles for the first set of fartleks, and then I turned around to
come "back" in the last set. The efforts on the way back are pretty visible by my pace.

(Some blue pace sneaks into the final bit of the 5 min interval as I turned around to run back to a drinking fountain after finishing that. I needed a drink!)

Kind of surprisingly, 4 of my 5 pairs of fartleks were with 0.01 miles, with only the 4 min effort being 0.05 miles shorter the last time (partly because it started uphill under Lake Street).

Near the end of the first “set” of fartleks (around my 4th effort which was the 4 min effort), I was thinking that this felt more like a speed workout than a long workout. But yet my overall pace for the entire run was 7:01 vs many of my “normal” long runs which end up around 6:40-something. So overall it was slower, but it contained more faster running.

It wasn't a magically delicious workout, but it was something DIFFERENT, and I think that's what I needed! My calf got a little tight, but otherwise I felt great getting in 30 mins of random efforts over an 11.6 mile run.

My pace shows the 10 efforts pretty clearly...


... and my heart rate overlaid does as well.


Speaking of heart rate: a lot of Zone 4.


And as always, my cadence is better (higher) when I run faster.
The 10 efforts are just as visible in my cadence as they are anywhere else.

So maybe next week I'll go back to my "normal" long run, but I need to start mixing things up like this to help improve my race-day fitness.