Lessons in speed training

Since I was able to remain injury free for over a year, I am working on getting some of my speed back. I have enlisted a good friend of mine who has run 5ks in the 25 minute range which might not be record breaking, but they are better times than mine. Earlier this spring we were chatting as we ran and I asked him what he did to get faster.   His answer? A combination of stairs/jump rope workouts as well as track/stairs workouts. I was intrigued and asked if he could show me sometime.

Within the next week or so, we did just that. I met him at his place, we ran the 2 miles to a decent length of steps and we worked it out. We did 25 jump ropes, then we would run up and down the steps twice, quick break and repeat. We did this 4 times and then ran very slowly back to his place. Oh boy those 2 miles were intense and we had doubts we would make it!


See? Those last two miles were BRUTAL! I was definitely feeling that for the next few days. I told my friend that I put this appointment in my calendar as "Jeff Bootcamp" and it was totally legit. 

My next lesson in speed training was even more challenging. First we ran a mile as fast and as hard as we could. I was quite proud of my 7.52!!! Next we did his spin on the 10-20-30 workouts ( I think that's what they are called). He takes the same concept but uses landmarks on the track instead of the timing. So what we did was 1/4 of the track we ran 5k speed, 1/2 the track ALL OUT, then 1/2 track recovery. We did this 4 times which got us to a little over a mile. Next, we ran loops around the track again but this time we did the steps of the bleachers. We only did two rounds of this due to it being my first time ever and his first time in many months. This is definitely not to say we didn't get our "money's worth" from the workout. It felt pretty great.


I am only kind of just kidding about your legs falling off. In total we ran about 3. 25 miles, maybe a little more. My Garmin kept auto pausing on the steps as I slowed down. I need to remember to take that off of there next time. 

After just two of these workouts I feel much stronger. Unfortunately the heat makes my lungs feel so heavy so I may need to adjust my week day runs to later in the evenings so I can train properly and not cheat myself on mileage.

Do you train to get faster? What kind of speed work do you do? 

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