Speed Work Notes

Speed work safely done is one of the best ways to get faster for the half or full marathon. But the most important thing is to do it safely. A first year marathoner should not do it, just build your base so you will be seasoned to do it safely for next year. Before doing a speed work session, warm up slowly for ten minutes and then stretch. In Katy Fit it is best to start doing speed workouts with a coach to get proper instruction. Another good plan is to do the first part of your speed session a little slower so you do not stress your muscles or tendons. Make sure you have good shoes and are running on a soft surface. If you are feeling too tired or dinged up, pass on speed work until you are fine. Finally your ultimate goal is to leave the workout feeling tired but not beat up, you should feel like you could have done another rep, if you are dragging yourself off the course, you over did it and are at risk for injury.

For the half or full marathon distance, the best type of speed work is the tempo run. To do it, warm up for ten minutes, stretch, and then run twenty minutes at the pace you could run a race for one hour. For most people this is slightly slower than their 10K pace. A good pace finder based on prior races can be found at www.mcmillanrunning.com. There are a few other good signs that you are running the correct tempo pace by the feel of it. You want to run to the point right before your breathing really comes up, or if lactic acid starts pooling up in your legs, back off. It is also the pace where you can utter two or three words while running. But the best strategy of all is to run the tempo run with Katy Fit on Thursday evenings and ask the coaches pacing questions. We want to help you get faster safely.

Another type of speed work is intervals. These are very fast efforts where you are running at 90 percent of maximum, you should not be able to talk much at all and will breath hard. It is a must to do these with a coach as they are the most risky type of speed work, and for the marathoners they have a far lower benefit than tempo runs. Hill workouts are best run with Katy Fit as they really need coaching.

Here are a few explanations of Katy Fit nomenclature for speed work:

50/Hill means a 50 minute workout with hill repeats in between; these are the riskiest of all workouts and are best run with a Katy Fit coach.

40/Tempo means a 40 minute workout with a tempo run in the middle; the goal is to work up to a 20 minute tempo run with a ten minute warm up and a ten minute cool down.

10x30/30 means 30 seconds at a 90% effort then 30 seconds slow, for ten times, will give you a ten minute workout, again this is best run with a coach.

In Katy Fit we don’t like to be negative about speed work, as it does make you a faster runner, but our overriding goal is to keep you safe while getting faster.