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I've been chronicling my workouts over here for the past couple months (although, admittedly not doing a very good job of writing much about them in detail lately). I've been working on increasing my speed and today I ran an 8:26 mile! That is huge for me! For a long time (years!), the fastest I usually run is a 10 minute mile, so I am really happy that I was able to increase my speed so much in such a short time. I needed to take a walk break after that before finishing the rest of my workout, and I walked a lot of my fourth (and final) mile because my legs were tired, so my overall time for my run today wasn't all that great. Now I need to work on being able to run faster, for longer.
Good job! If you want to run faster for longer (which is stamina - the mixture of endurance and speed), then you should try some fartlek intervals. Try jogging at a real slow pace (this is called your recovery pace - the pace you run to bring your hear rate back down) for a few minutes, and then when you pass any random landmark you start increasing your speed until your are running at about 75-85% of your max speed. Hold that pace for about 1-2 minutes (or until you pass some other random landmark) and then slow back down to your recovery pace. When your pulse has slowed down to a baseline level (or you can talk while jogging), repeat the process. The idea is to keep your pulse constantly between 80-175 bpm for 30-60 minutes. These workouts work real well with a heart rate monitor, if you have one!
Posted by: Daniel | February 19, 2010 1:09 PM