So I’ll be running my first half-marathon in six weeks (just did first 10k week ago in prep), and I’ve read that the general wisdom is to run long/slow, tempo, and speed runs in preparation. However, I’ve always had more sprinting ability than endurance ability, so I’m wondering if I should skip the speed workouts and just run long/slow and tempo. School me with the collective slowtwitch knowledge…
How fast was your 10k?? How fast do you want to ran the half??
Maybe sub out speed work for hill work.
Certainly Tempo and LSD should be the core. Speed work is good for training turnover and cadence.
Maybe sub out speed work for hill work.
I have to agree with this, skip the speed work if your body historically has no problems with it. Work on building the endurance up and hill workouts to get the body ready for that as well.
Good luck!
I think you shouldn’t expect to race fast unless you train fast…the question is how often and when it occurs. You can’t always run fast, but the point of speedwork is to actually simulate racing or even better increase LT by going faster than race pace for shorter durations. I know without a doubt that the track workouts I do have improved my speed both in long and short distance running. If you are a natural sprinter than all the more reason to hone the gift. Plus you can get a greater benefit in less time with speed. I don’t discount the ‘blue’ zone training and realize it’s important to have a good engine before you start racing hard, but I think too many athletes don’t push themselve’s enough in their training.
Definitely prefer easy and tempo pace to brief intense intervals. Don’t look to run slowly on easy days, look to run easily on them.
One good way for someone like to you keep feeling sharp during such workout is to pick a couple of easy days per week where you run some very brief but fast pickups at the end of a training run. Maybe 6 x 100 or so. Not sprinting but fast with good form. Like 1 mile race pace.
Some of the elite Ethiopian runners like to pick a hill and do a few very short but intense hill repeats. Like 50 to 80 yards very hard. It’s amazing what such low volume, intense stuff and do to keep your speed alive. And it doesn’t tire you out for the endurance/threshold work you need.
I do not think so, but it depends on what is meant by speed work (200 repeats proabably not). From what I have obserevd, true fast twitchers seem to get buy on lower mileage than the average. For a half you probably do not really need to go faster than 10K pace in training for the most part, however there is pretty much consensus among running coaches on doing striders regularly to keep the leg turnover up. Repeat halfs, 1200’s, or miles once a week or so along with a higher end tempo run, a long run, and whatever you can sqeeze in between works pretty well.
If your natural speed translates to never having a time in your adult life when you could not haul yourself off the couch and run a 4:40 mile, then you probably don’t need much in the way of “speed” work, as it relates to 10k’s or 1/2 marathons…although you would be a force of nature if you did do some speed efforts. If your ability is more along the lines of 11 second 100M speed, then yes you need to work on your speedwork, probably more than most people. The systems that delivers energy to run fast for an intermediate distance is a fair bit different than the system that delivers energy for shorter efforts.
Thanks for the great responses. To answer a couple of questions:
I ran the 10k in 48min, with the plan of trying out my goal half-marathon pace. I was pretty strong in the end, but ended up pretty sore the next few days. I tried out some ‘speed work’ today, consisting of trying a mile at a speed I hadn’t been running at all this year. I ran it in 6min and felt very solid. I plugged this into the McMillan running calculator and it projected a half-marathon time that I wouldn’t even dream of achieving. So, this kind of makes me feel that I shouldn’t spend much time on ‘speed work’. After all, I’m only running three times a week. I’ll probably throw in some striders at the end of a tempo run once a week
Again, thanks for the wonderful input.
If you want to do your best at a race…you need to train the specific demands of that race in training.
If you only have three runs per week:
- fast, short reps in a medium run of say… 60min… but NOT to blast your legs to bits. For example: 20x
- one tempo run, close to 10k pace
- one long run, build the pace to where the last 30min is at goal 1/2 pace.
If your objective is a faster half, then I would be working a lot more on endurance. Based on your fall off as the distance gets longer, you really are going to need to work on that the most. Either systemmatically increase your long run, add a couple of days of running between or both. You really should be able to get a HM race pace that is within a minute per mile of your mile pace, certainly within one and a half min/mi. I would not necessarily consider myself a fast twitcher at this point-just undertrained:)
I’m with Gregor on this. Forget strides and any kind of intervals or any speed work. it sounds to me like you have no base esp since you reported being wiped by a 10k. If you are only going to run 3x a week then I’d do 10k tempo, 10k moderate and then your LSD which should go from 12k up to race distance. I hope you are putting in some x-training like riding the bike or some other aerobic activity.
Work on your base and get your endurance up there.