I have been a runner consistently since 2012. It is certainly not a long time, and I feel
that despite the plethora of available information today about running, I have
gained all of my experience by mostly trial and error. Through failure and
progress, I sense that I have moved forward in a short amount of time. Case in point, I feel that my finishing times
have stagnated over the last year. I
have tried long runs to build stamina, and short interval runs to become faster,
yet both of these ordeals have either driven me to run too slow or to become too
tired too fast. However, I have finally
discovered something that has helped me improve my running speed and
endurance. Over the past three or four
weeks, I have been doing mostly timed tempo runs that demand me to start and finish
at the same place—no I don’t walk the first half and jog the second half to
finish early! Seriously, depending on
the duration of the run, I go between 15-25 minutes one way and then turn
back and hope to finish where I started in the same amount of time. Usually, I finish about 10 seconds late;
however, yesterday I did a longer run for 50 minutes and I strangely finished
almost a minute sooner, and I was not ever that tired to boot! Moreover, I went out today in the summer heat
and did 20k at a moderate marathon pace (around 5:00/km for me) and all things considered I was
not really that tired.
So dear reader, if
you are reading this I whole heatedly suggest trying these runs. They are painful at first. And in the beginning, you will wheeze; you will shuffle your feet; you will curse. In the end though, it will
really pay off in dividends. I will be doing these
tempo runs for the next three weeks, with the exception of a long slower run on Sundays to build
up my marathon stamina. As a result of
this, I am hoping to finish with a PB at the Warsaw Praski Half Marathon at the
end of the month. I am optimistic and
hoping for the best.
