Penny

Penny,

I saw your race report, then got interested in your training. Wow! You are doing awesome. There's a lot of speed in you. Congrats on your ramp-up, and the 1/2 pr. You've got a lot of headroom, and you are approaching your improvement very wisely.

Be careful on the speed, though. You can get plenty fast without doing a lot of 6 min pace short intervals. I guess since I'm so old, I try to reserve that type of running for races only.

Sorry to leave such a long comment. Once again, congratulations on your great progress.

Thanks for your comment Kam! Interesting thought on the intervals. I'm following Hansons on the speed stuff, and they start off with short intervals, and move towards longer intervals (1K, 1200m, mile-repeats) at slower paces (mile repeats at HM/LT pace) as you move through the plan. So short intervals are gone for the moment.

However it does raise a question for me; I assumed that I really benefited more from threshold/tempo workouts and developing my basic aerobic fitness. However, I have seen a lot of others completing 800s (or similar) workouts with much greater ease than me, which made me think that perhaps I needed the leg strength that such sessions provide?

Penny, you raise interesting questions. I can't speak specifically to the increase in leg strength due to short intervals; I'm not an expert by any means.

The reason I commented on the intervals is that I see so many injuries on the blog, especially to the women runners, and the common denominator seems to be fast workouts.

As you run faster, the amount of energy your legs/muscles/bones have to dissipate increases by the square.

Here's an example: At 7mph, a 50kg runner generates 225 units of energy. The same runner generates 400 units of energy running 9 mph. So by going only 25% faster, you DOUBLE the amount of energy your legs have to absorb and get rid of. That's a huge load to put on your legs, and the most common overuse injury (at least on this blog) is a tibial stress fracture.

Instead of running fast to get your 85-95% effort level miles, you may consider doing hills or upping the incline on the treadmill. If you must go fast, do fast workouts on the grass, or some other more forgiving surface.

My experience has been that doing long 1-2 mile intervals, and longer, 4-10 mile tempo runs is much better marathon preparation than 400/800's.

Also, it pays to be careful when increasing speed or distance. You can't do both without multiplying your injury risk. The good news is, as you build your aerobic base and add mileage, even slow, "easy" pace miles, you will naturally become faster, not to mention build your endurance.