A change in approach to training...

Bit of a ramble coming up!

Well I was reading an interesting exchange of views on one of the blogs (between mark909 and mrgwest) the other day about different ways of training, including easy runs and interval training.

That got me thinking, am I going about this the right way...

A little internet reading later and a bit of a eureka moment!

I've generally been training by running at my normal (pushing it but getting there without stopping pace) everytime I run, my pace is between 5m30s - 6m0s per kilometer.

My internet reading indicated that I was probably overdoing it and more prone to injury if i carried on like this. OMG LIGHTBULB moment - maybe my previous injuries could be attributed to this approach - hope so - because I've decided to try and do something about it.

So I found a website and entered my race pace (in my case I just put the fastest I done a 5K run) and it told me that I shoud have an easy run once a week at 7m00s pace, and intervals and then a normal/hard run each week.

Well today I went out and did my first easy run, I found it really hard to stick to the 7M/K pace, one minute my garmin says I'm too fast, then I'm too slow, but what I did notice was I wasnt finding it as challenging as normal and I kind of thought, I could hold a conversation at this pace. I checked my HR monitor and it said 135BPM and I thought I've read so many articles about running at a conversation pace, but thought how do you do that! Now I know, I'm sure with practice I should be able to learn how to run at two different paces.

When I got home I looked at the last run I'd done with my HR monitor and it was 165BPM, so pushing it. So I might use my HR rather than pace to monitor the difference between my easy and normal run.

At least my Garmin shows on average I managed to hit 6m55s pace.

connect.garmin.com/activity...

Also this should help towards increasing my speed, so double bonus, only time will tell.

Still slowly increasing distance, but this will now be on my easy run to get the miles in and hard runs will be for speed.

Take care and enjoy your runs, hope this hasn't been too painful and little helpful

[morningglory Graduate]

This is exactly what happened to me as well - I have now got my easy run/tempo/fast paces all pinned on the wall in front of the treadmill. If the weathers nice tomorrow will go out and try an easy run outside with my garmin as pace maker I will see how it goes.

[Hidden in reply to morningglory]

Hope you can get outside tomorrow before Siberia hits!

[oona Graduate]

This sounds really interesting Phil. Certainly gives me food for thought. Good luck.

[Hidden in reply to oona]

Cheers, enjoy your runs

[Norni Graduate]

I agree with you. I am surprised when I see my heart rate as I sometimes think I am not pushing it and my heart rate tells me differently. The heart doesn't lie.

[Hidden in reply to Norni]

So true, I'm reading "Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat (sic) Idiot" and at some point plan to find out my max BPM so I can train properly using heart rate monitor, but one thing at a time!

[MrsBirdsnest Graduate]

Hi Phil

Food for thought indeed! Would it be possible to put up a link for that website that calculated your paces? I really should look into this myself so that I can be sure that I'm keeping an 'easy' pace as my runs get longer!

Thanks. Sarah x

[swanscot Graduate in reply to MrsBirdsnest]

I use this pace calculator. It's feel right for me, although if you wish to be more accurate it's advised to use a Heart Rate Monitor.

goodrunguide.co.uk/Training...

[Hidden in reply to swanscot]

I'm glad you posted the link, because I'd lost it and I think this is the one I used, to be honest I tried a few using google search, but the info on this site makes more sense.

[swanscot Graduate]

I read somewhere that if you only ever run at one pace, you'll only ever run at that pace. I know when I completed C25K I felt I could only run at one pace. But through following an 8 week plan to get from 5K to !0K, using a mixture of three different runs - Intervals, Tempo and Long, Slow Distance, I found I could vary my pace.

Like you, I initially found the LSD pace too slow and invariably ran too fast. I only cracked it when I joined my son's GF for a run one day and her tempo pace was what I should be doing for my LSD run. We agreed I'd show her the route and she'd set the pace. I found I really could run at 'conversational pace' as I chatted to her the whole run - or at least I gave her a running commentary to the local area (she was running fast for her, so didn't give more than simple responses!). After that when running alone I tried to recreate the same pace.

[Hidden in reply to swanscot]

Glad to hear you have used this approach as it gives me more confidence that it's the way to go, I think of them as slow, intervals and normal. I'm doing intervals tomorrow and plan to use c25k+ speed podcast as i believe that is the intervals one, testing before buying some audio fuel and I recon I'll run without music on my next easy run otherwise it is too easy to run to the beat.

[OldNed Graduate in reply to swanscot]

I'm normally very one-paced but have found that if I lengthen my stride the pace goes up semi-automatically.

[notbad Graduate]

Thank you so much Phil & Swanscot for your informative comments. This is exactly the stage I'm at now, I run the same pace (as fast as I can!) and need to readjust to a properly thought out schedule. Wow that link is great - it does it all for you... if only!

[Hidden in reply to notbad]

It takes a while to work how to do it properly after c25k doesn't it?