End of March Training Update

A few weeks ago I started to look for a training program online that would help me achieve a low 5k time, but most plans I found seemed to be for people who have never done much running and just wanted to get to the finish line. I didn’t think that these would really do me much good for improving my time as just finishing the race won’t be a problem. I did find some intermediate plans but these ethier were for those running more miles a week than me or were designed to help you finish it in around 25 minutes. Which my goal (18:45) isnt even close to. So I did some research and came up with my own program. My thoughts are that I didn’t really need to improve my speed, as soccer had already done that, but rather I needed to improve my ablity to run fast for a longer time. With that in mind, I created a plan mostly consists of tempo runs with a medium long run during the week and a full long run on Sundays. I’ve actually improved a lot by this, during my second week of training I ran 1.5 miles in 10:30 and after doing my program for a bit I ran 5 miles in 32 minutes! So with time I think that with time I will be able to continue to improve and be ready for my first race on May 9th.

My advice for anyone else looking to improve their race times would be to first look at your current program and determine if it is truly going to help you reach your goals. For instance, I was doing speed runs twice a week and didn’t understand why my speed endurance wasn’t improving. Secondly I would recommend that you train on what you will be racing on. If your going to be racing on some hilly roads, make sure to spend time on the roads. It doesn’t make sense to spend all of your time on a nice flat track if you can’t handle some hills. Lastly, continue to stay committed! I cannot stress this enough. As soon as you make the decision to train regularly your goals will falls in to place.

Training by pace or effort: Which is better?

Everybody trains in their own way, between long, tempo, speed and hill runs there is a lot of room for variation. But could training by pace be limiting your potential? Well let’s take a look, if your goal is a 35:45 10k and you were to run 3mi at your at your goal pace, let’s say a 5:45mi pace every Thursday it might be hard at first but eventually your body would get accustomed to the pace and a step up to a 5:30mi pace would be back to being hard. You could certainly meet your goal but of course if you had to slow down in a race, for instance a slow runner then returning to a 5:45 pace will no longer will meet your goal because of the slower period before. If you still wanted to meet this goal you would have to speed up for a period of time, this could be anything but if it was a 5:30 or even a 5:35 pace then your body will not be used to it and you will feel a larger amount of fatigue than usual. I used to train by running at my goal pace until I read an article about how you could actually proform better by training by effort. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name or author of the article but il give my best explanation. So let’s say you still had that same goal of a 35:45 10k. Instead of doing a workout at that pace, you would run at what feels “hard” to you for 35 minutes. Since you aren’t going at a set pace every week, you run at what feels hard then everyweek your pace will increase without you even thinking about it. So by race day your body will be used to a much faster pace and it will allow you to crush your PR!

Running To Achieve

I would say most of the running population (those who call themselves “runners”) fall into the catorgory of people who simply run for fitness. Wether it’s to lose weight or stay in shape, they might do some local races with their primary goal being to finish the race but they wouldn’t be considered competitive runners. Competitive runners make up the other catergory and these runners aim to win races, finish in a certain part of everyone else (ex. Top 20) or strive to achieve their very best. This is who I am trying to become. My name is Benton Lewis, 17 years old and a senior in high school. My whole life I’ve been playing soccer and while I did some running in my free time I sorta stumbled upon it recently again and have become pretty dedicated to it. My goal personally is just push myself to find just how much I am capable of. I have dreams of qualifing for the Olympic trails for the 5000m race but I understand that’s far off into the distance. Right now I’m just working on building my way up starting with a goal time for my first 5k at 18:45. So the whole point of this blog is to write about my journey to achieve my very best and maybe somebody else can learn from what I am experiencing now and in the future, I guess it can’t really hurt.