Now that I am approaching my second winter season of running, I thought I’d share a few of my adventures from my newbie training. I’m sure many of you have set some new fitness goals for the year. How about a few laughs and a few tips? Let me take you back to last December…It was a cold, dark wintery night. Having only been running for less than three months, I still hadn’t decided if I even liked the sport. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn’t. My evil trainer (uh, I mean friend) decided to torture me with a training tool known as speed work. My first thought was, “What the hell is speed work?” I soon found out that it’s a technique that “real runners” use to train for races. I guess it helps improve their overall stamina, makes them faster runners, blah, blah, blah. Didn’t she get that I was not a real runner? Why must she torture me so? The better question is: why do I continue to let her? Oh yeah, because I’m easily talked into stuff…
We went up to the track at a nearby school. She had this great idea that we should just jog up there, do our speed work at the track, and then jog home. I wasn’t so sure. It was awfully cold outside…like 23 degrees cold. In case you’ve forgotten what 23 degrees feels like, we are just now getting to those temperatures again. (For those of you who don’t live in the “Mitten,” you’ll just have to imagine yourself jogging in one of those walk-in freezers like they have in restaurants.) To get a better feel for it, throw a sweat jacket on over your clothes, grab the thinnest pair of dollar store gloves you have, and step outside for a walk around 9 p.m. at night. Feel that wind rip through your clothes and chill you to the bone with only the moon lighting your way. Yep, now you’ve got an idea of what I’m talking about.
We arrived at the track and I was already feeling winded. I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold air, or the fact that I hadn’t run outside in over a week, or that I was just plain tired.
Here’s what we were going to do for our speed work: she would hold the stop-watch, yell “GO,” and then I would have to run one lap (a quarter-mile) around the track as fast as I could. Then, we’d switch off and I’d time her, thereby allowing me a short break to catch my breath. According to my running brothers and based on my then-current 10-minute, 47-second fastest-timed-mile, they said I should be able to push a little and run that quarter-mile lap in two minutes and thirty seconds with no problem. (That would be my elusive ten-minute mile pace I had wanted to hit.) So, as I’m gearing up to go, I anxiously say to my trainer, (who is getting impatient with the stop-watch), “Wait! Do you have any tips for me on how to do this?” While still looking down at her watch, she simply shakes her head no and replies, “Just run as fast and as hard as you can.”
Ugh.
She yelled “GO” and I took off. I was really flying! I hadn’t run this fast since…well…since...ever! I felt like I was faster than the bionic woman! (Okay, not quite that fast.) Then, I start to feel myself start to gasp for air…Can’t…Seem…To get…Enough air.
I gasp some more. I’m rounding the far end of the track and now the cold wind is suddenly blowing against me, instead of pushing me from behind. I’m gulping in the cold air and my legs are going numb while my cheeks are stinging from the wind. My contact lenses suddenly seem frozen to my eyeballs.
Can’t…Breathe.
Uh-oh. My heart is pounding. My chest really hurts. I was running so fast and now I suddenly feel my body shift into a lower gear, like a car shifting into neutral. My legs and body begin to sputter out. I wasn’t going have enough in me to finish the lap. Crap! This stinks. I slow to almost a walk and I suck in a few deep breaths trying to fill my lungs, which somehow seem to be devoid of all oxygen. How is that possible? I’m sucking wind and expanding my chest to full capacity, yet I feel like I have no air. I try to get my breathing under control. I was so focused on pushing my legs as fast as they could go, I forgot to breathe. Don't ask me how that's possible...it just is. Who forgets to breathe? Me. Just then, I hear my trainer screaming at me from the other side of the track, “Don’t slow down! Keep going! Finish strong!” I shake my head in frustration and I take a few more gulps of air and kick my pace back up. God! This is the biggest track in existence! There is no way in hell that this is only a quarter of a mile. How long can it possibly take to get around it?
Ahhhh! I am screaming inside my head. A quarter-mile is much farther than I thought. With the pace I’m meandering along at now, I’m sure I’m well-over my two-and-a-half minute goal. I try to finish as fast as I can as I come around the last curve. I collapse to my knees onto the track, coughing and wheezing. I brace myself, expecting to hear my horrible time. It felt like forever as the seconds ticked on.
Then, I realize my trainer is yelling at me.
It took me a second to actually hear her. She’s shouting, “Ohhhh! I HATE YOU! This is just not fair!”
Huh? She continues on, “Do you even know what you just ran?!? You ran it in ONE MINUTE, FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS!! That is AMAZING!! And I hate you! It took me two years to get that fast!”
(Ting! Lightbulb!) Ohhhh. She’s congratulating me! Awesome! I guess I did well. I suppose the lack of oxygen to my brain while I was pushing my legs beyond their physical limit affected my comprehension skills for the moment. She was actually congratulating me. It felt good. Well, let me clarify: her comments made me feel exhilarated, but I still pretty much felt awful. With my chest pounding and coughing hard, I still struggled to catch my breath. My legs were like jell-o. She handed me the watch. It was her turn. No rest for the weary. She ran it in a breeze. She finished it in one minute, thirty-seven seconds. Wow.
She didn’t even fall down afterwards like I did. She’s a real runner. After about 30 seconds, she took the watch from me. “Your turn again.”
Crap.
I thought maybe she’d forget. Or go easy on me. No such luck.
And so we continued torturing each other for several more laps. After my last one and a huge coughing fit (stupid asthma) my trainer started to worry a little. I think she thought she may have to run to my house and get my inhaler or call for help or something. I assured her I wasn’t dying, (at least, I didn’t think so) and we headed back home.
The next day, I hurt. Muscles that I didn’t think I had were suddenly there and screaming at me in pain. I could walk, but just barely. Boy was I sore! How could I have gotten hit by a truck and not remember it? When I complained to my trainer, she said, “That’s good. It means your growing new micro-muscle fibers,” (or something like that.) Here’s my super-duper mathematical analysis of the evening: speed work = torture.
But let me tell you this, now having more than a year of running under my shoes, and finally being able to call myself a (gasp…dare I say it…) a real runner, I can tell you that as torturous as speed work is, it really is a good training tool. I later learned it is also often referred to as fartleks. A training idea developed in the 1930s by Swedish coach Gösta Holmér, fartlek literally means “speed play” in Swedish and is a type of interval training. It allows the athlete to enhance both the aerobic and anaerobic systems because it’s an unstructured training system whereby the athlete varies the speed and intensity whenever he or she desires to do so. (Or, in my case, feels pressured to do so, from their trainer who is screaming wildly at them from across the track.) Those Swedes are pure genius. Inventors of IKEA and fartleks...need I say more? Currently, my fastest-timed quarter-mile in training is now one minute, 43 seconds. Although it’s only a mere four seconds faster from a year ago, I can now consistently hit that pace for a short distance even after running several slower paced-laps. (And an added bonus: I don’t collapse into a wheezing ball of mush anymore!) It has also enabled me to gradually increase my overall race pace, shaving minutes off of my finish time.
Regardless of the circumstance, if you are looking to improve your speed or change up your workout, try some interval training. If you normally walk, throw in a 60-second jog. If you normally jog, throw in a few sprints. Mix it up and maybe you’ll get some exciting results! Just remember to dress appropriately for the weather conditions and it's also helpful if you take a training buddy with you. I usually only do speed work about once every few weeks and my race times have consistently improved. It will be hard the first time you try it. It will be hard the tenth time you try it. In the words of my wise trainer, “It’s never easy.” But, just because something isn’t easy, doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.
Sometimes, the harder something is, the greater the reward will be. New jobs, new life choices, new training techniques, throwing yourself into new situations…it can be difficult. But remember, just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I’m going to throw my 2012 catch word at you again: courage.
The reward can be great.
*Please click the FB like button if you liked this blog! Thanks! Also, I'd love to hear your training adventures!
We went up to the track at a nearby school. She had this great idea that we should just jog up there, do our speed work at the track, and then jog home. I wasn’t so sure. It was awfully cold outside…like 23 degrees cold. In case you’ve forgotten what 23 degrees feels like, we are just now getting to those temperatures again. (For those of you who don’t live in the “Mitten,” you’ll just have to imagine yourself jogging in one of those walk-in freezers like they have in restaurants.) To get a better feel for it, throw a sweat jacket on over your clothes, grab the thinnest pair of dollar store gloves you have, and step outside for a walk around 9 p.m. at night. Feel that wind rip through your clothes and chill you to the bone with only the moon lighting your way. Yep, now you’ve got an idea of what I’m talking about.
We arrived at the track and I was already feeling winded. I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold air, or the fact that I hadn’t run outside in over a week, or that I was just plain tired.
Here’s what we were going to do for our speed work: she would hold the stop-watch, yell “GO,” and then I would have to run one lap (a quarter-mile) around the track as fast as I could. Then, we’d switch off and I’d time her, thereby allowing me a short break to catch my breath. According to my running brothers and based on my then-current 10-minute, 47-second fastest-timed-mile, they said I should be able to push a little and run that quarter-mile lap in two minutes and thirty seconds with no problem. (That would be my elusive ten-minute mile pace I had wanted to hit.) So, as I’m gearing up to go, I anxiously say to my trainer, (who is getting impatient with the stop-watch), “Wait! Do you have any tips for me on how to do this?” While still looking down at her watch, she simply shakes her head no and replies, “Just run as fast and as hard as you can.”
Ugh.
She yelled “GO” and I took off. I was really flying! I hadn’t run this fast since…well…since...ever! I felt like I was faster than the bionic woman! (Okay, not quite that fast.) Then, I start to feel myself start to gasp for air…Can’t…Seem…To get…Enough air.
I gasp some more. I’m rounding the far end of the track and now the cold wind is suddenly blowing against me, instead of pushing me from behind. I’m gulping in the cold air and my legs are going numb while my cheeks are stinging from the wind. My contact lenses suddenly seem frozen to my eyeballs.
Can’t…Breathe.
Uh-oh. My heart is pounding. My chest really hurts. I was running so fast and now I suddenly feel my body shift into a lower gear, like a car shifting into neutral. My legs and body begin to sputter out. I wasn’t going have enough in me to finish the lap. Crap! This stinks. I slow to almost a walk and I suck in a few deep breaths trying to fill my lungs, which somehow seem to be devoid of all oxygen. How is that possible? I’m sucking wind and expanding my chest to full capacity, yet I feel like I have no air. I try to get my breathing under control. I was so focused on pushing my legs as fast as they could go, I forgot to breathe. Don't ask me how that's possible...it just is. Who forgets to breathe? Me. Just then, I hear my trainer screaming at me from the other side of the track, “Don’t slow down! Keep going! Finish strong!” I shake my head in frustration and I take a few more gulps of air and kick my pace back up. God! This is the biggest track in existence! There is no way in hell that this is only a quarter of a mile. How long can it possibly take to get around it?
Ahhhh! I am screaming inside my head. A quarter-mile is much farther than I thought. With the pace I’m meandering along at now, I’m sure I’m well-over my two-and-a-half minute goal. I try to finish as fast as I can as I come around the last curve. I collapse to my knees onto the track, coughing and wheezing. I brace myself, expecting to hear my horrible time. It felt like forever as the seconds ticked on.
Then, I realize my trainer is yelling at me.
It took me a second to actually hear her. She’s shouting, “Ohhhh! I HATE YOU! This is just not fair!”
Huh? She continues on, “Do you even know what you just ran?!? You ran it in ONE MINUTE, FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS!! That is AMAZING!! And I hate you! It took me two years to get that fast!”
(Ting! Lightbulb!) Ohhhh. She’s congratulating me! Awesome! I guess I did well. I suppose the lack of oxygen to my brain while I was pushing my legs beyond their physical limit affected my comprehension skills for the moment. She was actually congratulating me. It felt good. Well, let me clarify: her comments made me feel exhilarated, but I still pretty much felt awful. With my chest pounding and coughing hard, I still struggled to catch my breath. My legs were like jell-o. She handed me the watch. It was her turn. No rest for the weary. She ran it in a breeze. She finished it in one minute, thirty-seven seconds. Wow.
She didn’t even fall down afterwards like I did. She’s a real runner. After about 30 seconds, she took the watch from me. “Your turn again.”
Crap.
I thought maybe she’d forget. Or go easy on me. No such luck.
And so we continued torturing each other for several more laps. After my last one and a huge coughing fit (stupid asthma) my trainer started to worry a little. I think she thought she may have to run to my house and get my inhaler or call for help or something. I assured her I wasn’t dying, (at least, I didn’t think so) and we headed back home.
The next day, I hurt. Muscles that I didn’t think I had were suddenly there and screaming at me in pain. I could walk, but just barely. Boy was I sore! How could I have gotten hit by a truck and not remember it? When I complained to my trainer, she said, “That’s good. It means your growing new micro-muscle fibers,” (or something like that.) Here’s my super-duper mathematical analysis of the evening: speed work = torture.
But let me tell you this, now having more than a year of running under my shoes, and finally being able to call myself a (gasp…dare I say it…) a real runner, I can tell you that as torturous as speed work is, it really is a good training tool. I later learned it is also often referred to as fartleks. A training idea developed in the 1930s by Swedish coach Gösta Holmér, fartlek literally means “speed play” in Swedish and is a type of interval training. It allows the athlete to enhance both the aerobic and anaerobic systems because it’s an unstructured training system whereby the athlete varies the speed and intensity whenever he or she desires to do so. (Or, in my case, feels pressured to do so, from their trainer who is screaming wildly at them from across the track.) Those Swedes are pure genius. Inventors of IKEA and fartleks...need I say more? Currently, my fastest-timed quarter-mile in training is now one minute, 43 seconds. Although it’s only a mere four seconds faster from a year ago, I can now consistently hit that pace for a short distance even after running several slower paced-laps. (And an added bonus: I don’t collapse into a wheezing ball of mush anymore!) It has also enabled me to gradually increase my overall race pace, shaving minutes off of my finish time.
Regardless of the circumstance, if you are looking to improve your speed or change up your workout, try some interval training. If you normally walk, throw in a 60-second jog. If you normally jog, throw in a few sprints. Mix it up and maybe you’ll get some exciting results! Just remember to dress appropriately for the weather conditions and it's also helpful if you take a training buddy with you. I usually only do speed work about once every few weeks and my race times have consistently improved. It will be hard the first time you try it. It will be hard the tenth time you try it. In the words of my wise trainer, “It’s never easy.” But, just because something isn’t easy, doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.
Sometimes, the harder something is, the greater the reward will be. New jobs, new life choices, new training techniques, throwing yourself into new situations…it can be difficult. But remember, just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I’m going to throw my 2012 catch word at you again: courage.
The reward can be great.
*Please click the FB like button if you liked this blog! Thanks! Also, I'd love to hear your training adventures!
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