Speedwork is for just about everyone, regardless of your pace or ability. Not only will it make you faster and fitter, it will provide focus, keep your training interesting and could even help you lose a few pounds too. Sportsister explains why and how you should introduce some speedwork sessions into your training.
One of the fantastic things about running, especially compared to other less intense activities, is how quickly you get results.
Certainly to begin with, you can feel yourself getting fitter, faster and leaner the more you run, and that’s pretty motivating. When you first begin running, and probably for the first six months of your running ‘life’, your main goal is to build endurance. The sense of achievement you get from clocking your first non-stop 30 or 45 minute run, is incredibly satisfying and inspires you to do more.
Initially, your focus should be on increasing the length and distance of your runs and improve your ability to recover from training sessions, where you don’t feel stiff, tired and sore anymore. You may well have added a couple of sessions so you’re running 2-3 times per week and you may even have taken part in a 5 or 10km race.
But after a while it’s easy to get into a rut, plod along at the same pace and those initial improvements tend to slow down. There is nothing wrong with that of course, it all depends on your reasons for running and what your goals are.
But try varying your running pace with a bit of speedwork and some specific sessions, and we guarantee a whole host of benefits. And before you stop reading this, thinking ‘I’m not an elite runner, speedwork isn’t for me’, then think again. Speedwork is for just about everyone, regardless of your pace or ability. Not only will it make you faster and fitter, it will provide focus, keep your training interesting and could even help you lose a few pounds too.
In this feature, we’ll aim to clear up some of the confusion around speedwork, and introduce you to some basic sessions to inject some pace into your running.
The basics of speedwork
First things first though, only consider doing any sort of speedwork after you’ve been running for 4-6 months and are regularly running 3 times per week. Focus on building endurance first, then after a few months, when you can run for 45-60 minutes and have a regular running habit, start to add some quicker and specific sessions.
Don’t be fearful of speedwork, it doesn’t have to ‘hurt’ and you shouldn’t be in pain! Done correctly it will make you a faster, more efficient and fitter runner. If you want to run a new 10km PB for example, you can’t just add miles or ‘do more training’, you need to teach your body to run at a faster pace. The only way you can do that is introduce it through shorter bursts of that faster pace, interspersed with recoveries.
If weight loss is your goal, some faster running is just the thing to rev up your metabolism and get you burning more calories. And even if you’re just a bit bored with your running regime, a few sessions of speedwork will add some variety and give you more focus, providing motivation and feedback on your progression too.
Especially if you’re a beginner runner, speedwork takes you out of your comfort zone and into a new territory. It will teach your body and also your mind, that you can handle much more than you thought. So strap on your trainers, a decent stopwatch and give it a go – what have you got to lose?
First things first….
1. Only begin adding ‘speed’ sessions once you have built a good endurance base, have been running at least 4 months and are regularly running at least 2-3 times per week.
2. Start with an introductory (see below) session once every 10 days
3. Speed training should not account for more than 15% of your overall mileage. So say you run 15 miles per week, only 2.2 miles (maximum) per week should be ‘speedwork’.
4. Think ‘quality’ not ‘quantity’. Forget ‘junk’ miles. Yes you’ll be working harder, but you’ll get great results.
5. Speedwork is not about pushing yourself so hard you retch by the side of road. It’s about developing a controlled pace where you learn how hard you can push it, but within limits.
6. Try using a heartrate monitor and working to a specific heartrate.
7. Always have an easy day before a speedwork session and a recovery day afterwards.
8. Warm up and cool down properly. This means a good 10 minute jog to increase blood flow, heartrate and temperature. Follow that with some gentle stretching – especially calves, quads and hamstrings – before you move onto the main session. To cool down, jog for another 5-10 minutes and stretch again.
9. Make sure you’re fully fuelled and hydrated. There’s nothing worse than trying to tackle a tough session when you’re hungry or dehydrated. But don’t overdo it, you’re not carb loading for a marathon.
10. Have a realistic plan for your session and know what you’re going to do in advance. And write it down in your running journal afterwards.
Make a plan
The word ‘fartlek’ is often used when discussing speedwork, and simply translated, means ‘speed play’. It’s often suggested as a way to introduce beginners to intervals or speedwork. The idea is that in a fartlek session you’d just go out for a run and throw in some fast bursts of anything between 1-2 minutes, or between lamposts or whatever takes your fancy.
From my own experience however, I prefer to have a specific plan when tackling a session and most of the people I coach like to know what they’re going to be doing and most importantly when it’s going to end! It gives you more focus and a sense of achievement from having completed it. Without a specific plan, I find I can be easy to over or under-do it.
How fast is fast?
As for pace, it can be difficult to get it right to begin with, and knowing how hard you can push (and recover) only comes with experience. Err on the side of caution at the beginning, but gently start to push the boundaries as you get more confident.
If you imagine that normal steady running pace is something like 5 or 6 out of 10 on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being flat out). Then your speedwork efforts need to be something in the region of 8 or even 9 out of 10. I guess you could call it ‘controlled discomfort’. You should be breathing hard, able to speak a few words, but not a sentence, but not gasping for breath or hyperventilating. It should feel controlled and sustainable, yet on the edge of your limit. Remember it doesn’t last for long and you have recoveries to look forward to.
Introductory speedwork sessions for beginners
- Try one session every 10 days or so and make sure you have easy days either side.
- A session including warm up and cool down will only take you around 30 minutes.
Hill Repeats
Hills are a good way to start speedwork. Find a gentle slope, preferably traffic free (nothing too steep) and try 6 x 1 minute repeats – jog slowly back down.
Make a note of where you got to on the first one and aim to get there each time (drop something visible to mark your spot). Progress by going up to 75-90 seconds, or alternatively adding reps until you’re doing 8-10.
Progressive 3-3-3 Tempo
Continuous tempo running is one of the best ways of getting fit fast. Find a nice flat route and head out for 10 minutes to warm up. Start your watch and simply pick up the pace for 3 minutes, keeping it steady and consistent.
Don’t then have a rest, but pick up the pace even more for the next 3 minutes and again for another 3 minutes, so by the end you’re pretty much at your limit and have done 9 continuous minutes of ‘hard work’.
You can progress this further by adding a minute so you’re running 4-4-4 and then even up to 5-5-5.
Pyramid Session
So called because you start with a short burst, then increase each repetition incrementally (in time or distance) and then come back down again. Find a flat route and start with a 30 second interval, and have 1 minute recovery.
Then add 30 seconds on each interval with 1 minute recoveries in between. The ‘work’ intervals will look like this: 30 seconds, 1 minute, 90 seconds, 2 minutes, 90 seconds, 1 minute, 30 seconds.
You could have 1 minute recovery (walking or slowly jogging) between each one, and perhaps a longer recovery after the 2 minute interval.
Progress this by starting at 1 minute, and increase by 30 seconds each time to reach 3 or 4 minutes. Walk or jog slowly after each one until you feel recovered and ready for the next one.
Simple Intervals
This is classic speedwork. Simple intervals are just repetitions of faster running, with recoveries, where you walk or jog slowly and then go again. Try 6 x 90 seconds (on the flat) with equal recovery time. Progress this in the following ways:
- Increase number of intervals to 8
- Or increase interval time to 2 minutes
- Or decrease recovery time
You can play around with any combination of these progressions, but make sure you develop pace so you maintain the same speed throughout and don’t burn out by going off too fast.
So there you have it, a few simple ideas to get you started. There is no mystery surrounding speedwork, all you have to do is run a bit faster some of the time and develop an understanding of pace, how hard you can push yourself and how well you recover. Try a few of the sessions above and see how you get on.
Sarah Russell, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
Sarah Russell has an MSc in sport science, 18 years experience as an athlete, trainer and writer and is a qualified athletics coach. She is a keen runner, triathlete and cyclist and has represented Great Britain as a lightweight rower and as an age group duathlete. She lives in East Sussex, is also a mother of 2 boys and is training for her first Ironman distance triathlon in 2010.
