Roads, Mills, Laps

It’s so simple, it’s barely worth writing about.

That being said, here goes:

-Focus on the number of repeats that you are going to do. As you go deeper into your plan and as your fitness improves, you are going to do more repeats in each subsequent session.

-If you need to do 1 or 2 more repeats than last session, then give yourself some forgiveness on your goal pace. Shall we say +5 seconds in a mile repeat session?

-If you are increasing the volume, then try going to a track to do the workout where you can get the pace feedback you need at 200m intervals

-Don’t time the increased reps for the week: Just do the damn things. So if you are to do 6 reps and you did 5 last week, your last rep, your 6th one will not be timed.

-Wear a hat and sunglasses on a scalding track where there’s no shade; consider bringing to your workout what we in the Army used to call “snivel gear.” For a hot day’s workout, the snivel gear could be something like a little piece of candy (a candied orange slice, perhaps?) or a towel that you will wet or a bag of ice that you will put on your head. At the end of the repeat, reward yourself accordingly. Think about your little reward as you spin the little web of concentric misery. Think of yourself as a mouse in a Skinner box.

-Try to find workout partners that are doing the same # of reps that you are doing. It’s pretty demoralizing waving goodbye to them when you have 1 or 2 more reps. left to do and they are off to drink tea, eat crumpets, and backslap each other under giant palm fronds waved by colonial natives.

-Remember that not every rep is going to be a strong one. Your body is an enigma–or a stubborn mule–and you have to consider yourself lucky when you can magically get it to do what it’s supposed to do. For all the other times, when, for example, the ball of your right foot hurts or the left lung blows out that ferrous exhaust on the first lap, consider yourself a bonafide realist.

-Run the reps. relaxed; tell yourself to stay limber during each lap.

-Consider progressing during the rep–go out slowly intentionally.

-Remember to pace the reps. Think about the big picture.

-”One at a time.” Don’t do fractions and percents, like “33% done” or “1 divided by 6 is .1666 with a bar over the 6.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.