on any given day, i'd rather run hills than run speed intervals. i've actually formed a sort of love affair with running hills. but running hills doesn't make you faster. only running faster makes you faster. speed workouts make you think too much. it's a series of running at one pace for x amount of time, then running at another pace for y amount of time, and i have to be careful not to run too fast for too long because i could poop out. it all requires too much precision and time keeping for my feeble brain. the hill interval on the treadmill does all the work for me, breaking my run up into three minute increments, varying the grade of the hill throughout my run.
so to my surprise, i noticed a speed interval button on the treadmill! jigga what?! you enter a jog speed and you enter a run speed and by pressing the speed interval button, it toggles back and forth between the two speeds. not too impressive of a feature. i still have to keep track of time myself. it would be better if you could program the length of time or distance of your jogs and runs. it took a lot of discipline to MAKE myself run faster than was comfortable, even at three minutes at a time. and at least on the hill interval, it gave you a nice graph of the hills and valleys you ran. on the speed interval, the graph never changed. all i had was the slowly clicking clock and the even slower clicking odometer.
the only good thing about speed workouts is that they don't have to last long to feel like you got in a good workout. 45 minutes and i was done and spent. i'll be a faster runner, yet. just you wait and see. i just have to get used to the discomfort of being so out of breath you want to puke your guts out .
2 comments:
I like the speed intervals or any intervals for that matter. I think they help cut the workout into sections and make it go faster.
I disagree that running hills doesn't make you faster. I ran in Chicago for 11 years -- flatlands everywhere -- and never progressed beyond a 10-minute mile except for a 5K where I ran an average 8:48 pace --total fluke. Fast forward to last fall, when I moved to New York City, which has some big-ass hills (who'd have thought?). By December, I'd gone from an average 10-10:30 pace to 9:30 and a sub-9-minute race pace. I credit the hills. I also blame them for my hip injury, the bastards.
That said, speedwork will make you faster as well. Keep doing your workout, though, and you'll see!
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