Be Progressive!
What’s your favorite workout? Intervals, time-on-feet, hills, fartleks, tempo (define that one), plyometrics, track, 5K, 10K, 15K, Half, Marathon, Ultra?
Yes, races are workouts too. What is a workout? A structured period of work designed to improve a specific facet of your running ability. So, when racing are you not learning? If you don’t learn something when you are racing, you are wasting a great opportunity to make great strides in your running.
Anyways, my favorite workout? Give me progressives. A solid progressive run will test your turnover, lactate threshold, breathing, pacing and mental strength. A good progressive run will allow you to further test your mental strength as things get tougher.
Here’s how I do a progressive, I’m sure there are other options and other ideas but I like mine best (convenient). Right out of the driveway and into a nice lazy warm-up pace. I admit it, I use a Garmin 305, I set it to record a lap each mile. At the end of one mile, I pick up the pace. How much do you pick up the pace? It depends. How far is the run? That will determine how much the speed increases. If you’re doing 3 or 4 miles, then the second mile needs to be significantly faster than the first mile. If the run is 8 or 9 miles, then the speed increase should be much smaller. Each mile should be faster than the last mile. Remember, the next mile must be faster than the current mile so be sure that you have enough “top-end” room to finish the run.
Here are some of the keys to keep in mind, you don’t want to spend this run staring at your watch. The idea is to use these runs to improve your pacing. You want to learn how to gauge your pace based on effort. In order to do this, you have to get internal. You should feel the effort, feel the work being done so that you start associating effort with pace. Look at your watch when each mile ends so that you can gauge your effort and your time. This feedback will help you build this knowledge base.
Another key is to run each mile as consistently as possible. In other words the pace at the beginning of the mile should be the same as the end. Do not rest at the beginning of the mile and then sprint at that end to bring your time in. You want to “shift gears” at the end of each mile and pick up the pace for the next mile.
It’s hard to fight the instinct toward the middle of a progressive, my instinct is to start running too hard too early. This will make it impossible to complete the scheduled distance at the right paces, at some point you will no longer be able to make the next mile faster than the last. A progressive run can be successful or unsuccessful. Here is how I judge it – I have a planned distance, if I run the planned distance and each mile is faster than the previous mile and the last mile is close to 5K pace, then the run has been successful. If my pacing is off or at some point I can’t run the required pace or I can’t finish the mileage, then the run has been unsuccessful.
Progressives will help your running and hit upon many different aspects of your running at the same time. Try a progressive and let me know what you think.
