How do you guys and gals increase your running speed, for distances in the teens, in miles.
About every three or four days, I alternate running a slow, 60% MHR, for 14 or so miles, which equates to a 9, to 9.5 minute mile, very slow. On the other running day, going hard: I try to run as hard as I can for 3 -4 miles on a high school track. I can do, like a 7:40 mile on the first mile, the next two right under 8. I can almost do the 4th mile under 8. I try to add one more mile to that speed day, every 2 weeks, where I can do, say 4 miles, all under 8, and then maybe in 2 weeks, get up to five straight miles, under 8 minutes. I don't even look at my heart rate monitor during the sprinting because I'm not much off 5 or 8 beats from max during these maximum 30 minute ordeals. I dread the days those sessions come up. This afternoon is one of them, and it's windy outside, and I really don't want to go through with it. They are so painful. But I guess I will.
Is this how people try to get faster, by incrementally adding that extra distance into the assbuster speed work day, and build it up like swimming intervals?
A friend of mine is an ultramarathoner and he said the best way to develop speed is to first develop a comfort level at the distance you want to go and keep adding distance, and, in the middle of the long runs, start hauling ass for one of the miles, in the middle of it, or run hard every third mile, jog, and so on, like that. Yet another friend of mine says that's bunk, what you should do is run 800s, as fast as you can. Walk a lap, run another 800.
About every three or four days, I alternate running a slow, 60% MHR, for 14 or so miles, which equates to a 9, to 9.5 minute mile, very slow. On the other running day, going hard: I try to run as hard as I can for 3 -4 miles on a high school track. I can do, like a 7:40 mile on the first mile, the next two right under 8. I can almost do the 4th mile under 8. I try to add one more mile to that speed day, every 2 weeks, where I can do, say 4 miles, all under 8, and then maybe in 2 weeks, get up to five straight miles, under 8 minutes. I don't even look at my heart rate monitor during the sprinting because I'm not much off 5 or 8 beats from max during these maximum 30 minute ordeals. I dread the days those sessions come up. This afternoon is one of them, and it's windy outside, and I really don't want to go through with it. They are so painful. But I guess I will.
Is this how people try to get faster, by incrementally adding that extra distance into the assbuster speed work day, and build it up like swimming intervals?
A friend of mine is an ultramarathoner and he said the best way to develop speed is to first develop a comfort level at the distance you want to go and keep adding distance, and, in the middle of the long runs, start hauling ass for one of the miles, in the middle of it, or run hard every third mile, jog, and so on, like that. Yet another friend of mine says that's bunk, what you should do is run 800s, as fast as you can. Walk a lap, run another 800.