Hi friends!

I hope your Tuesday is off to a great start.  Mine is flying by quickly as usual!  It started this morning with another gorgeous outdoor hilly run with one of my clients.  After our usual loop we added in some hill sprints.   Some of you asked in yesterday’s Marathon Monday post comments about further info on getting faster by going slower.  I did reply to those comments but thought I’d also bring it up briefly today as well.

In addition to working your body in the aerobic range so that you can build up your body’s ability to burn fat as fuel on long runs, you’ll also want to incorporate some faster training on your short runs (plus weight training and flexibility, but again that’s a whole other FitFeat post ;) )

You can Google running programs and find a TON of free info on the internet that will tell  you how many miles to run each week based on your goal, on which day, that you need to do tempo runs, hill repeats, speedwork, yada, yada, yada.  I don’t follow any of them as written.  I’m not knocking them by any means.  I’m sure they are great plans (and maybe if I followed them I would complain less about my achy knees!)  But the minute I see a schedule detailing that I have to do X, Y, Z on these days and A, B, C on the other days, my eyes glaze over and the rebellion sets in immediately.   :)   I spent too many years being overly obsessed with counting every minute of exercise and every calorie I ate to ever want to do that again.  For me, that’s the express train to Boredom City.

Yes I do get in “tempo runs” and “speedwork” but they are primarily unscripted.

I incorporate intervals during my week in a variety of ways, but I couldn’t guess as to whether they are 400, 800, or 1600 meter repeats – ask my running buddies how I feel about trying to calculate math during a run.  :)   When my legs are running, I promise you my brain switches off.  So looking at the fractions of miles on my Garmin and converting to meters when I’m running?  Not gonna happen.

I can’t say whether I’m running at my “5K pace” or my “10K pace” because I don’t race at those distances, so I don’t track that.  I pay attention to my pace and my heart rate as they relate to each other, but not as they would relate to which race distance pace they might equate to.

What I can tell you is that I love to blast out different types of intervals and that’s basically my speedwork.  Today after our run, we picked the steepest hill and did sprint intervals for 10 seconds, then recovered until my client’s heart rate was down to around 70% of max, then we shot off for 10 more seconds, repeat, repeat, etc.  On my own, I might do this for 20 seconds, then continue walking up the hill for 40 seconds, then sprint for 20 then walk 40 and so on, until my sprint and my walk aren’t easily discernible.  Maybe I’ll find a landmark (tree, sign, streetlight) and sprint to it, then recover, find another, sprint to it and so on.

At home on the treadmill, after a good warm-up and maybe a short run, I’ll bump the incline way up and do some incline interval running.  One day I might spend 30 seconds crazy-fast, then 60-90 seconds recovery, then repeat.  I do this for the amount of time I have and/or for the amount of time I enjoy doing it.  I don’t do X, Y, Z and A, B, C as written in a plan though.

My “tempo runs” are the ones I do for fun at my normal “happy, but pushing a tad” pace, usually with a friend and sometimes on a treadmill.  Or maybe a hike (speedwalk the ups, run the downs). But again, unscripted.

To do well at running distance, yes you do need to factor in a variety of running styles:  long slow runs, short fast runs, speedy interval training, incline work.  But to do it well and be happy doing it?  Maybe you just need to march to the beat of your own drum a little.  :)   Find out what you like and do it.  Find out what you don’t like then figure out how you can tweak it slightly to make it something you dislike a little less so that you’ll still get some done.

***

OK friends, I am off to the dentist to have him look at my second broken crown in a year.  I’m going to ask if he’ll give me a gold crown this time, so that I can stop paying a thousand bucks a pop for these porcelain ones that keep breaking on me.  (FYI if you have porcelain crowns, be careful with SEA SALT!  Both times my crowns cracked I bit down on some sea salt that must have had a good chunk o’ minerals in that crystal…)  I’d rather have a gold tooth than give up sea salt though.

Next time you see me, maybe I’ll be rockin’ the Flavor Flav look:

Peace out yo!  ha ha!

– Shari B. =)

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