amschrod's mentor group - FULL (Page 16)

Some of the guys in my office were very interested in my race.  So much so 3 of them also signed up for the Osprey Tri in Oct.  Two of the guys I did the Columbia race with also signed up for the Osprey Tri.  It is a shorter sprint and FLAT!!!.   Looking forward to racing in Oct. 

Okay so back to training and the questions will being...

Will interval training for running make you faster??  Adding sprints during a run or just doing a set of sprints as a workout?  I guess that would go for swimming also correct??

I will try to post some pics of my race.  Great to have family support during the race and after.  Hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th.   I see most of us on the eastcoast are experiencing a major heat wave...stay cool

That is very cool! Great job motivating some of your coworkers. 

I would say it is most likely too soon for you to really add speedwork to your running. Most people would only recommend it after you are regularly running 25 miles per week. A common expression goes something like this: Speedwork is icing on the cake, and you have to bake your cake first.  There is a danger of injury if you try to add intervals into your training without an adequate base.

To build your base I like to follow the 10% rule, adding 10% to your volume weekly with 3 weeks of building followed by a shorter recovery week. Most of your running should be easy; zone 2 if you do HR training, or if not, you should be able to have a conversation with complete sentences. I also like to keep my long run at about 30-40% of my total weekly volume.

For my own speedwork, I prefer tempo runs. 4 or 5 miles with a mile warm up, 2 or 3 miles at a faster pace, slower than my 10K race pace but faster than my half mary race pace, then a 1 mile cool down. The tempo pace ends up at about 8:30, while my regular training pace is 9:30 to 10:00. I do that maybe once a month, and also usually in the week before a race.

I may be a little overly cautious, but I keep getting a little faster every year, and I have avoided injury.

Swimming and biking are definitely different because the chance of injury is much lower, plus you can recover quicker from a hard ride or swim than you can from a hard run, so you can add intervals anytime.  I keep my interval training pretty simple because if it is too complex it takes away some of the fun of training for me. Swimming I usually throw in a couple of hard 100's after warming up, but if you want to do more, the training plans here have some good swim workouts, or you could check out swimplan.com. 

I also keep my biking simple. On my weekday shorter rides I have a lot of short hills and if I'm in the mood, I will hammer them. Or sometimes I will hammer a whole short ride if I am feeling ambitious.

Would really like to see some pictures. Very nice having your family there.

It sure has been hot! Already 80 for my ride at 7:30 this morning. I am glad there is plenty of shade on my roads!

Anthony