Endurance sport is an extensive aerobic pace workout right ? Speed doesn’t really come into to it right?  Speed work means going “lactic” right? Speed work means going to a track or veledrome donning spikes and smashing yourself right?

There will always be a debate about nomenclature and frankly I’ve got better things to waste my time on than arguing what “speed” work is in a defenitional sense

For some the term means work performed using anaerobic/lactic energy systems eg All out sprints where the interval is typically less than a couple of minutes- the focus is on the physiology and what energy pathway is recruited

Then there’s a whole other side to it- co-ordination, brain training (neuromuscular co-ordination if we want to get fancy), being able to relax (central nervous system conditioning).

In practical terms we will risk not being scientificially correct and say that anything that challenges your currently ability to hold a particular pace we’ll call “speedwork”

In our experience with endurance athletes it is often the non-physiological things that limits speed. We are not talking top end 400m “sprinting” speed. We agree that is an energy system you dont use in endurance sport.  (although this type of speed work does have long term benefits to endurance athletes- we wont go into that here)

Many athletes just never get around to practicing running faster or fail to see the benefit of focusing on training anywhere near their anaerobic threshold pace….because thats for sprinters right?

The key reasons given include:

-They are still building their aerobic “base”-they are not ready for it

-Speed work is too hard for the bodies of older/inexperienced athletes

-Its never going to be relevant to someone racing well below threshold

-It compromises the following sessions and recovery

All of these reasons are valid. However does “speed” work have to be done in a way that these impacts are so debilitating?

Consider the following sessions:

Treadmill run

Joe Bloggs Threshold is pace 3.45mins/k

1mins @4mins/kilometre (15kmh) then 1mins @3.32mins/kilometre (17kmh). 10 Repeats

Windtrainer

Joe Bloggs Threshold Watts 360W

1mins@320W then 1mins@ 370W. 10 Repeats

Both of these sessions are relatively short. Both take the athlete slightly above their threshold pace but very sparingly. The recoveries are back below threshold pace but still require that a solid aerobic pace is held. (Compare this to a “sprinter” doing 200m efforts- often resting for long periods before doing the next effort/walking back)

Consider also this session

Joe Bloggs- IM run pace (lets say 60% of threshold) = 5mins/k

Joe target long run pace- 4.45mins/k (he figures he’ll loose 15-20sec/kmh off a bike) with a 1k block of 4.20/kmh every 15mins

Joe Blogs-HIM run pace (lets say 80% of threshold pace)=4.30m/k

Tempo run 6×2kmh repeats @4.15m/km

In both of these sessions Joe is focusing on his “speed”. Sure its not “speed” work to the likes of Ato Bolton or Maurice Green but both of these situations put the athlete in a situation where they have to run a pace that is slightly above what they are accustomed to. Long run pace is very pertitent to good age groupers. You’ll find a lot of people who focus on heart race at try and keep their LR aerobic- so every Sunday for 4 years they run about 5m-6m/k keeping the HR at 135-155 and make modest improvements but frequently stagnating…sound like you? The focus on HR and avoiding “speed” work ignores the work the brain and nervous system need to do to be able to run a higher pace. This needs to be ingrained by modest amounts of training at a speed that HR would sometime indicate is not “aerobic”

So when you decide whether speed work is appropriate for you or someone tells you its a waste of time……..have a think again……….done the right way speedwork could be very time efficient and effective way to train. Speed work doesn’t have to mean blowing yourself to pieces on a running track. There are too many one pace aerobic plodders in this world-dont be one of them.

Just a thought to open debate…..comment is always welcome…….JC

BTW Gebre likes a bit of speed work—-endurance athlete last time I checked—uses a treadmill a LOT

This entry was posted on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:26:06 +0000 at Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:26:06 +0000. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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