Mix it up a little.

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You have been training for a little over a month, you have established a pretty solid foundation, now its time to mix it up a little.  If you have been following your training program and running all of you workouts at the same pace, read on to see how adding a little "speed" play into your preparation will help you have a better Bellin Run.

While its true that your ultimate running performance is dependent on your base training, once you have established a good aerobic foundation your body requires a little extra stimulus to perform better. 

Slow down, to get faster!  The Long Run.  A common training principle once used only by competitive runners has been shown to be an effective tool for us weekend 10K runners as well.  Long and slow, its pretty simple in its description but hard in application.  (If you try to win every workout, you understand how hard it is to go slow)  In your current schedule you can incorporate a long run, once every 1-2 weeks.  Think duration not speed, start with the distance of your current longest run in the past couple of weeks, increase this by a mile, and then slow your pace down.  Run at a comfortable pace usually 1-2 minutes slower than your anticipated race pace.   Use the long run to gradually increase the distance you can run and to prepare your body for the ammount of time you will be on the race course.  Low intensity, long duration - Enjoy these runs!

Be fast, train fast.  The long runs will prepare you to handle the distance, and as long as you continue the long runs, a little speedwork will help you run faster for all distances.  There are numerous methods of speed play from a beginner runner simply increasing pace or accelerating in portions of their daily runs, adding a couple of "gliders/striders/strides" at the end of a run, to an advanced track workout designed only for speed work.  Prepare your body to run faster by training at a faster pace than you would normally run.  Higher intensity, shorter duration.

This week we introduced the Run a Better Bellin Class to this concept by running qurter mile repeats on a track to allow them to physically feel the difference in race pace, training pace and a long run pace.

To accomplish your time goals, think about mixing it up a little...

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