man, I think I'm a distance guy at heart (i.e. I identify with them, have all the strange mannerisms, wear the short shorts) but I honestly feel like I'm wasting my time with it sometimes. let me compare some of my most notable speed workouts and my best endurance workouts.
speed:
3x3x200, 150m walk between reps, 10 min standing rest between sets. times were 25, 30, 30, 25, 28, 23, 25, 28, 27
5x300, full (10 min+ standing) rest between reps. times were 36, 37, 36, 36, 35
4x90 seconds hard, 3 min standing (read: laying down with eyes rolling back in head) rest. distances covered were 550m, 570m, 550m, 660m.
distance:
4xmile, 3 min rest between reps. times were 5:29, 5:24, 5:25, 5:19
4 mile tempo, average pace 5:52
^plenty of variants of the above, slightly slower
the distance work is average at best. that 4xmile workout indicate maybe 17:10 shape, and the 4 mile tempo doesn't indicate much of anything really, since it's pretty slow.
the sprints, however, are amazing. hitting 25s for a 200 multiple times, hitting 23s in itself is amazing. it only gets better with the 300m workouts, as 300m in 36s is 75% of the way to a 48 second 400m. I was able to do five of them, and on all of them except maybe the last I felt like I could keep going for 100 more meters.
but the real mama of speed workouts is the 90 second sprints. I have it all written down in pretty bad handwriting because I didn't want to forget. it was cross country season, october 2010. I had run decently fast the morning of (5 miles at sub-7 pace is what the diary reads, so faster than your average distance day). in the afternoon coach told us the workout was going to be 90 second runs at hard-to-very-hard effort. we were scheduled to do 8 of them. I did the first one in what I thought was a pretty aggressive 65sec 400m pace or so. coach didn't like it. said he wanted it faster. so I ran it faster the second time. it didn't feel good faster, so I "backed off" (I put backed off in quotes because I was running ridiculously fast for my fitness). coach then told me I was bullcrapping, and he didn't like it. something struck a chord there, because of all the things he has ever said to me, I thought he had no right to tell me about how hard I was working. so I ran the last one 100% all out. I covered 660 meters. 660m in 90 seconds leaves me to leg out 140m in 29 seconds to run a sub-2 800 in a race. more likely, I'd have gone it in 25 seconds, which is like 70 seconds per 400 a.k.a. much slower than i had been going. that'd have been good for a 1:55 800m. at the time, I had not yet broken 2:10 (though, it had also been maybe 5 months since I raced at 800m and I was a completely different runner from when I set my at-the-time 800m pr). when coach blew the whistle indicating to stop running, I just collapsed. I remember the pain so clearly. my head had that pounding that you get from interval training, and my legs were very clearly hurting, not just limp or weak. my whole body was heavy. I didn't get up. the coach had to come pick me up off the track and feed me water. when I asked if that was working hard enough, he chuckled and said "almost. but it'll do for today." so just like that, the workout was cut short. I don't think I could have done a 90 second slow jog until maybe an hour later.
I live for those kinds of workouts. the ones that take you so deep into the well that you stop seeing the light at the top. where the pain makes you cry, and you don't get up off the track. i've only had three of them, and the other two were during my 8th grade year, where we were doing 12x400 in 80 seconds both times it happened. but I wasn't fit back then. I haven't been able to muster up the strength to run like I ran that day doing the 90 second runs.
still, I think it's only a matter of time before I do it in a race, and when I do, that's when I'll get the sub-2 performance that is way over my other ones.
/rant. this memory fires me up so much, and writing it down again makes me super ready for track.
