slow play
while picking up my fifth grader from her first track practice this spring, she bounced into the backseat and her first words were “we ran a fartlek at practice today.” momentarily caught off guard, i asked for more details to see if she understood what the (swedish) term meant. (“speed play”)
she explained how she and her teammates went on a run which alternated between short/fast efforts and slower/easy efforts. needless to say, i had a wide grin on my mug for the ride home. not only could my daughter drop the word “fartlek” without giggling, she understood the concept behind it.
on the other hand, my training could best be described as “slow play” since my average training pace is in the upper 8’s per mile. even with the rather pedestrian training pace, i can afix a bib to my belly and grind out 6:25 per mile pace for a half marathon.
my best guess is that there are a number of factors that allow me to train slow and race “sort of” fast. among them are…
- body weight (mid-150’s at 5’10)
- consistency (recent 365 day run streak)
- experience (umm… ## years)
while that’s all fine and good, i decided to do some strides after a ten mile run the other day. you know…work on the leg turnover.
the next morning my body wasn’t real pleased and it took me a really long time to get my rear end out the front door. next time i play like that i plan to temper my enthusiasm a bit.
5/1 – 7 miles
5/2 – 7 miles
5/3 – 7 miles
5/4 – 9 miles
5/5 – 7 miles
5/6 – 7 miles
5/7 – 7 miles
5/8 – 7 miles
5/9 – 7 miles
5/10 – 10.5 miles
5/11 – 9 miles
5/12 – 7 miles
5/13 – 7 miles
5/14 – 7 miles
5/15 – 5 miles
5/16 – 7 miles
5/17 – 10 miles
5/18 – 9 miles
5/19 – 7 miles
5/20 – 7 miles
5/21 – 7 miles
MTD – 157.5 miles (21/21 days, 22 hours & 43 minutes)
YTD – 954.75 miles (135/141 days, 141 hours & 1 minute)
Odometer – 38,492 miles