Speed Work

Since we moved back from Tokyo in July of 2008, marking the time since I ran with my running club, Namban Rengo, I haven't done any actual speed work. Well this month that is going to change. I'll be somewhat following this article by Greg McMillan in Running Times magazine. It advocates doing your periodization for marathon training in this order: build up, speed work, tempo runs. For the Myrtle Beach marathon I built up my tempo runs along with my mileage, did not speedwork, and as previously stated, that was good enough to qualify me for Boston. (note: tempo runs for me are long runs at marathon pace, usually 12-14 miles with 10-12 miles at 7:10-7:15 pace)

Previous marathons that I've run in the 3:20 range, Tokyo and Nagano, I did a build up and then tempo phase while doing speedwork throughout. With this new format after finishing up my mileage build up (I peaked last week at 3 runs of 15, 13.4 and 15 miles) I'm starting up with intervals again and today that meant mile repeats. Since it was raining pretty hard this morning I decided to make use of the treadmill and joined the rest of the family at the health club. I did a two mile warm up, which I pretty much always do, and then did 5 x 1 mile at 6:24, 6:26, 6:22, 6:25, 6:26 with half mile active recovery in between. Nine and one half miles total. Not bad especially since this week I'm trying to ease into the faster pace (on Tuesday I did 12 x 1 minute at 6:20-6:30 pace with 1 minute recoveries). I don't want my tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints to revolt against the sudden increase in intensity.