I HATE speed work!

And of course, there's only one problem with that - I want to go faster.

Okay, I may have jumped into this one a little too quickly. As you probably know if you've read this blog a time or two, I started running about 2 months ago. I started out very simply, but quickly moved to following a more formal training plan, mainly because the only way I knew how to train to run was to pick a distance and try to run it as quickly as I could without passing out, falling over, etc. Let's just say had I stuck with such a plan, my running days would have probably been over in a week or two, because I was legitimately dreading the prospect of running most days.

Of course, most training plans you'll find out there are for a race of some length, so I had to make a decision about what kind of runner I wanted to be, at least for the forseeable future. I settled on a training plan for 5k running. The middle distances really appealed to me, because I wanted a distance that would challenge me, but also one I could really go after to try and get faster at. I just don't feel like I have the temperment (mostly the patience) for very long distances, and while I've come to enjoy my longer runs in their own way, my experience to date has confirmed that. I do feel a sense of accomplishment when I complete a run of 5 or 6 miles (prior to two months ago I think the farthest I'd ever run was maybe 3.5 miles, and that was 12 years or so ago during soccer pre-season), but what really gets me going is the idea of watching my times drop over 2 or 3 miles.

There's just one problem with that - in order to run faster, you have to, well, run faster. Were I just looking to stretch out my distances, I could settle in at comfortable paces and build up my long runs appropriately from week to week. That'll only do so much for my 5k abilities, however, and so at some point I have to push if I want to get faster. I can improve my endurance all I want, but eventually I have to train my body at higher speeds to be able to better sustain them.

The training plan I'm on calls for me to do this in 2 ways. Basically, ideally I run 5 times a week. 2 of those runs are comfortable runs for distance (currently 3 and 6 miles respectively), a 3rd is a timed run at a very easy pace, which occurs the day after my long run for the week. The other 2 days are speed work days. The first form of speed work, a tempo run, isn't so bad, in fact, I still mostly enjoy it. My tempo runs start out with 5-10 minutes at a pretty comfortable pace, followed by 15-20 minutes of running "comfortably hard" - in other words, I feel like I'm really working, but at a pace that I know I can sustain without putting myself under serious distress.

Then there's the kind of work I was doing today - speed intervals. These, I hate. This is the one day on my running calendar each week that I really do not look forward to. Intervals are pretty straight forward. You pick a distance, you run really hard for that distance, then jog/walk the same distance, then repeat the process. The objective is to be able to maintain your speed from the first interval to the last, and over time to increase the number of intervals you can do. . Since I'm training like I'm going to run a 5k, my perscribed interval distance is 400m, or roughly 1/4 mile. I started out doing 3, and now I'm up to 5. These suck. Now, admittedly, the first time I tried these, this happened, so I might still have some lingering bad associations, but I'm pretty sure that's really not it. These are, in no way, comfortable. Now, as I learned quickly, these are not to be run so hard that you need to collapse at the end, the point is to be able to repeat them, but I do put myself into considerably more distress doing these than I do with any of my other workouts. By the end of the fast portion of a run, my lungs are burning and my legs are seriously wondering what exactly they've done to merit this kind of punishment. It definitely takes every bit of the slow jog back to get ready for the next one, especially as I get further into the workout. I also do this in a nearby neighborhood, about the time of day when other people are out walking, and I'm pretty sure some of those people think I'm nuts. Luckily it's not MY neighborhood, so they don't actually know who I am...

The thing about these workouts is that, after the first couple weeks, I haven't seen a lot of visible progress within the workouts themselves, at least in terms of progress that's measured by the stopwatch. That can be a little extra frustrating at the end - and yet I know that it is these, my most hated of workouts, that drive the improvements I see in my other workouts, where suddenly my "comfortable" pace is just a bit faster than it was the week before.