Some thoughts on speed work, training volume, and results on the road…..
Ultra running is fun, right? No emphasis on pace, mile splits, Strava segments. You can run slowly, you can walk the hills. Well, if you get really tired you can even walk the flats too and still no one will judge you. Lots of eating 😋. In fact lots of eating of high calorie yummy snacks, the more the better. If you tell your non-ultra running friends you ran 50 miles they are going to be impressed no matter how long it took. Just getting round the course is an achievement. No one asks how many minutes per mile you were running. But is it really that simple? And does it mean ALL your training can be slow and steady running without any speed work? Not quite!
Speed work can help greatly with improving running economy (the relationship between oxygen consumption and running speed) and aerobic capacity (the maximum amount of oxygen your body can make use of during intense exercise, i.e. your VO2max). If you were to compare your body to a car, your VO2max is the size of the engine and your running economy is the fuel economy. And having a greater running economy benefits ultra runners as much as it does those who focus on shorter distances. Greater economy means your body will need less oxygen at a given pace. This is as relevant in an ultra as in a 10k. As the hours in an ultra tick by I am going to be grateful when my super easy pace of 11 minutes per mile still feels quite OK to maintain in for instance mile 50. In addition, when I started on my ultra journey I thought I ‘just want to get round’. I soon found out that whilst I might be running for fun, at the same time I am very keen to improve my ultra times and be competitive, at least with myself and with runners in my age category or of roughly similar ability to me. Getting round is not quite enough for me any more. And recently I had to ‘sprint’ for a win (small field 😉) in mile 50 in a race, so there can definitely be a need for raw speed in an ultra!
I am not a coach and have no qualifications in sports physiology, so I will simply describe here what seems to be working for me, largely based on the Higher Running ultra training programme that I tend to follow. So how much speed work do I do? I try to stick to the 80/20 principle, having been inspired some years ago by Matt Fitzgerald’s book ’80/20 Running’. Lots of coaches and training programmes use that approach. It’s not rocket science: run around 80% of your weekly volume at lower intensity, and 20% at higher intensity. In other words: don’t get stuck in the ‘moderate intensity rut’ ( Fitzgerald calls it zone X). Make sure your easy runs are really easy, and your hard runs really hard! I try and run about 50 miles per week, spread over 6 days with a rest day on Monday, when I tend to do a short easy walk and some yoga. My long run is often on Sunday, but being retired does give me the flexibility to do it on a different day if need be. Sometimes my long run is a long hike instead, for instance if I am recceing a route. I do a continuous tempo run of just over an hour on a Tuesday, and a speed interval session with the club on Saturday. Occasionally I go to the club’s track session on a Wednesday instead. But I wouldn’t normally do both those sessions in the same week, tempting as it may be. All my other runs are either easy or steady pace. If I have a race in a particular week, if I am tapering for a race or recovering from a race I adapt the schedule accordingly. I keep a record in Excel with both the runs and workouts as per the plan and the actual ones I do in the row below, to keep me on track. I generally don’t do a speed session in the week before a race, but will do steadier runs with some strides built in, to keep some intensity in and remind the legs how to turn over fast. The running is complemented by strength training and yoga, never enough but I do my best. My 60 year old legs do need all the help they can get!
Though I have been running for 15 years I only started to take it more seriously (in terms of dedicating more time to running and increasing my weekly mileage) about 18 months ago when I upped the volume to at least 40 but more often 50 miles a week. I was already doing speed work before, however the combination with increased mileage has definitely paid out its dividend. Apart from being able to run regular ultras on the trails without too much trouble so far (touch wood!) I have improved my times on the road in the marathon, 10k and 5k distances, all since I have turned 60 last autumn. I have previously written a blog about my quest to break 50 minutes for 10k . Since running 48:49 for 10k at Dewsbury I have improved my 5k personal best time twice in a row (at the Evensplits Leeds 5k races) and it now stands at 23:52 which I am very pleased with. I ran my first ever 5 mile race (they don’t come along very often) last week at the Vale of York and was pleased with a time of 39:38 which won me £10 💰 by winning the 55-64 age category. That is first time I have won any money in a race! And I ran 7:12 on the track for a mile the other day in a training session. Time to enter another mile race I think and see if I could get below 7 by pinning a race number on. It does help somehow!
To conclude my ramblings, I think higher weekly mileage and speed work, backed up by strength training, are working beautifully together to unlock whatever potential my body holds. As a pretty average runner without any natural gift for speed (I did not choose my parents wisely) I am delighted to see improvements at my age, and I hope I have not stopped improving quite yet. And even when my fastest times on the road will one day have reached their limits, I will continue speed work to maintain my ultra running endurance and keep those steady miles ticking along.
