Run Faster

Wednesday night was my track workout night - we ran 3 x (400, 300, 200, 100) with about 1 1/2 minutes of rest between each interval. Those types of short interval workouts are the toughest for me, probably because I wasn’t blessed with a good supply of fast-twitch muscles or natural speed. Still, I enjoy - in a sick, twisted sort of way - doing short intervals like this, especially when I’m preparing for a shorter race.

However, when I’m preparing for a longer race, like a marathon or half marathon, I prefer doing either longer intervals of at least 1000 meters or longer each, or tempo runs. Both have their advantages.

In my way of thinking, longer intervals help you build speed for the times you need to be able to surge, like at the end of a race or when there’s someone just a little bit ahead of you that you want to get past. Tempo runs, on the other hand, seem to contribute to better endurance and an overall faster pace.

What is your favorite type of speedwork and why?

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As of last Friday, I had almost completed week 12 of my 20 week half marathon training plan. That week was scheduled to be a recovery week, and Friday was a tempo run.

My heel had been bothering me since Wednesday morning or so - I think as a result of walking pretty fast for about 1/2 mile in not-so-great shoes on Tuesday night. My husband and I were trying to get to the presidential caucus and ended up parking the car quite a bit away from the caucus location and walking because traffic was really backed up and we were afraid we weren’t going to get there otherwise. But that’s another story. The other possible culprit is my running shoes - I had just switched to a new pair about a week before I started having pain.

Anyway, I did some cross-training on Wednesday and an interval workout on Thursday. The interval workout went okay, although I was having a little bit of pain. Friday I was still having some heel pain, but (stupidly) did my scheduled tempo workout anyway. I completed the workout even though the heel pain kept getting worse as I ran. I don’t know what I was thinking. After the run, I knew that I had injured myself. By Saturday morning, I could barely walk.

So, I was forced to take last weekend completely off from running. The one thing I did do last weekend was go to Road Runner Sports to return my shoes. I had bought my shoes from their online storefront, but they also take returns in person and I’m lucky enough to have a store nearby. I can’t say enough about the customer service I received there. The runner that helped me took the return then fitted me for a more appropriate pair of shoes. He thought that the problem I was having might be due to some heel slippage, so he fitted me with a pair of New Balance shoes with a narrower heel.

Now, it’s Wednesday, and I’m back to walking pretty normally, although I’m still having a little bit of heel pain. For the past couple of days, I’ve just been doing cross-training - a swim on Monday and some biking on the stationary bike at the rec center yesterday. Today I’ll either do some more stationary biking or try the elliptical, depending how I feel. I’m hoping to be back to running by Friday or so, but this time I’m not going to push it. I’ll wait until I’m pain-free before I try another run.

The open question that I’m trying to answer now is how I’m going to revise my training plan to take into account this injury timeout. So far I have two ideas:

1. Assuming I’m back to running by Monday at the latest, go right into week 14 of my training schedule, reducing the mileage a bit until I’m sure I’m completely healthy, but otherwise pretending like I’m right on track.
2. Forget about doing a half-marathon in April, and just concentrate on getting ready for the Colfax Half Marathon on May 18. This means that I could start week 9 of my training schedule again on Monday (probably also with a reduction in mileage until I was sure I was healthy), giving me a little more time to build back up.

Right now, I’m leaning toward option 2, but I’d love some input on this. Fortunately for me, I really haven’t had many running injuries, so I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. Any ideas?

If you’ve ever had to revise your training plans mid-stream because of an injury, I’d love to know what you did and how it worked out for you. Please leave a comment and let me know. And thanks.

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