It’s so easy, I find, to tip over from relaxed, happy, and positive to straining, striving, and worrying, and trying to fit too much in. Yesterday evening, I completely accidentally happened across a YouTube video about running, and had an aha moment about including threshold paced training into my week. It felt like the missing piece I’d been looking for as I want to train for another half marathon over the next few months and hopefully bring my time down from the last one I did. I’d already decided I needed to slightly increase my weekly mileage, drop my second club session which wasn’t really adding anything to my fitness and was possibly even harmful as I really don’t need two speed sessions per week, and add in some moderate paced runs at somewhere around my target half marathon pace. But I wasn’t quite sure exactly what that last point would involve. I’ve been experimenting with progression runs recently at parkrun and a small fun run I took part in. While it was kind of fun to play with pace and also to approach those shorter “races” with a slightly easier plan rather than just going as hard as I could, I was starting to suspect that it wasn’t really the right thing to be doing to get faster over the half marathon distance. It didn’t feel specific enough. On the other hand I felt like running parkruns at my half marathon goal pace would be too slow and possibly not provide any training benefit at all other than maybe getting me used to what that pace felt like.
So being reminded of the purpose of threshold runs, which I think is that you are working at or around your lactate threshold, or the pace you can maintain for an hour, and over time the more you put in a certain amount of work at that pace, the easier it becomes and hopefully your lactate threshold increases so that you can run for an hour at a faster pace, and so obviously your 10k and half marathon paces should come down as well as your paces at other distances. This kind of running, sometimes also referred to as tempo running, although I think that technically refers to a slightly different pace, or possibly could be any set pace, is something I’ve known about for a long time, seen on training plans etc, but it’s something I’ve never actually managed to implement in my training. We don’t ever do this kind of training at my running club, and so for the first few years of taking running seriously I didn’t really consider it at all. I thought I was doing the right thing by running some of my runs easy, and some of them hard, which I think is an ok place to start and certainly better than having no plan in place at all. When I did come to hear about threshold runs, I tried to do one and just failed miserably. I think I probably either tried to run too fast, or for too long, or both, but the experience was so unpleasant that I decided it wasn’t for me. Instead, because at the time I did a lot of races from 5k through to half marathon distance, I decided I was getting the equivalent training effect from my races. I think that did work for quite a long time, or else I was still just benefitting from beginners’ gains. Eventually though I went through a period of struggle, a few niggles, combined with maybe making some questionable choices such as entering ultras, triathlons, a swimrun, doing some trail running which I completely suck at, you name it.
I’ve only really come back to road running and trying to improve my times in the last few years, since Covid really, which had the benefit for me of stopping me from entering races, because there weren’t any for a while. Having to just train for several months at a time, with no races to get in the way of the training, made me realise how much better I could get if I did the right things. Now I’m in a position of having done some slightly better times in 5k through to half marathon. Not PBs but certainly moving in the right direction again, and so I’m excited and motivated to do even better. I feel like I’m more mature, more level-headed, my diet’s better, and I’m better at running on my own when I need to. I know what I want and I think I’m ready to push myself a little more to get it. But then the question became, what do I actually do now? I know how to train for marathons. At my level, anyway, I just increase my mileage, while continuing to do speed work at my running club and putting in some effort at parkrun every week. That was sort of working for me, but in all fairness something always seemed to go wrong and so the marathons never really went the way I wanted to do anyway. So I don’t really know if that training would have worked if I hadn’t picked up a cold or fallen and hurt myself right at the last minute (and yes, that has happened in my last four marathons; I haven’t had a single one go smoothly since my amazing year of PBs).
So, it suddenly occurred to me a few weeks ago that maybe I don’t actually know HOW to train at all. I’ve been aiming at 5k and 10k distances for the last couple of years but I’ve not really ever gotten anywhere. What seems to happen is I try to train for a marathon, it goes either disastrously or so-so, then I rest for a bit and decide to focus on 5k and 10k. After a few weeks of rest, I feel amazing and run a pretty good time, off basically no specific short-distance training. Then I get all excited about what I could achieve with proper training. But then something goes wrong, or I basically just attempt to run a fast 5k every single week at parkrun, get nowhere, or I push too hard at a speed session at my running club, then ache for the next two weeks. Then, before I know it, it’s time for my next longer race and the cycle starts all over again.
Conclusion. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never really trained properly in my entire life. The success I did get was all due to beginner gains.
I’m actually excited by this conclusion. Because maybe – just maybe – I could actually properly improve if I finally started to do the right things? And the crazy part of this is it’s not necessarily harder stuff, more painful stuff, or more time-consuming stuff. The crazy part is that it might in fact feel EASIER than what I’ve been doing, aka showing up every Tuesday at my club and Saturday at parkrun feeling sick with nerves because I feel like I have to push myself to my limit. Now that I really think about it, I’m wondering how on earth I ever thought that approach would work? It’s literally the craziest and most unthought-out plan I’ve ever heard of!
Anyway, I’ve slightly gotten myself sidetracked from my initial premise which was how easily I find I slip over from having a sensible well-thought-out plan to gathering too much information and trying too hard to cram too many things in at once. I get so excited, you see, and then I discover more and more ideas and I go from having this great plan that is simple and makes sense…to uncertainty and confusion. But. I’m not going to let that happen this time. Oh no. Although, I might just go and have a look at a few more training plans, just to see if I’m on the right track…