A couple of minutes before the group run last Saturday, my coach was giving the team a few pointers on running efficiency. When she finished I raised my hand to ask a question: "Which is more important to focus on right now: SPEED or DISTANCE?". You could tell she felt tremendously embarrassed to be breaking the bad news as she said, "Well, Lisa, in your case, you really need both."
Since I suppose this was no revelation to me, I set off to the gym today to work on speed. I ran/walked 3 miles at a 3/1 rhythm (run 3 min/walk 1 min). During my running segments, I have been working to get to that 12.5 minute/mile pace (which is a 4.8 speed on the treadmill), so I used that as the baseline. Every 30 seconds, I would increase the pace to 5.3 on the treadmill and then drop back down to the 4.8 pace. Not only could I handle it, it really didn't seem that much harder!
Tomorrow the weather should be nice and I am going to take this new-found speed outdoors. My plan is to attempt these short sprinting runs to help increase my pace. I can't hold that speed for long periods of time, but I need to begin pushing some more boundaries. We'll see where it leads!
Until next time,
Lisa
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