Running Fast is Hard!

A very important part of my marathon training is speed training. It is also the second least fun part of training. The first is hill training. I haven't been doing much in the way of hill training so far, so right now speed training is the least fun part. I shot an email to my coach Terry for some advice. This is part of his response:

---As an example, if you run your 800 m at 3:10 pace, theoretically you should be able to run a 3:10 marathon. The key to Yasso's is repeatability. You should be able to run them CONSISTENTLY within 5-10 seconds of the same time for each repeat. Generally a 400m recovery jog is run between them. You should concentrate on working your way up to between 8 and 10 of these.

Another option for you would be to do ladders, working your way up from 200m, 400m, 800 m, 1 mile ( with a recovery of about 1/2 each distance) and then work your way back down again.

Still another option, which worked well for me, is to concentrate on the Yasso's but with MINIMAL recovery between them (15-30 seconds). This will feel very much like racing, and is likely to be the hardest of the workouts of suggested. You will need to experiment with these to see which workout is best for you. Remember, you do only ONE of these workouts per week.

Lastly, another option from speed work is to do FAST hill repeats. Find a short,(100-200M ), moderately steep hill, run the uphills hard, and then walk or jog back down. Work yourself up to 10-12 of these. I know several people who swear that these are as effective as formal track work. Again, you will need to experiment to see what works for you.---

I was kind of hoping he would have something different for me, but I guess not. I used Yassos to train for the Flying Pig and he is completely correct. They were very accurate at determining how fast my marathon pace would be. I ran them at 3:30 most of the time during training and ran a 3:37 marathon.

I tried the Yassos with a short rest last week, and that wasn't for me. I need to keep moving, so I switched to the 400 jog in between. It gives a little more recovery time.