This morning’s run brought me to a realization that the skill of pacing is taken for granted. It’s taken for granted by me as a coach and most as runners or swimmers. In cycling you have constant feed back of your speed, it stairs back at you from your handlebars reminding you of what you need to be doing. It’s not so convenient while running and swimming. Now Garmin’s are very helpful but not as easy to see and you can set alarms and for both speed and heart rate to monitor things. However it is important develop the ability to assess your speed based on how “it feels”. This doesn’t need to be as refined as an elite track athlete or swimmer that spends numerous hours turning out laps at given splits on an on going basis. It is important to have an idea of what speed you are moving and what splits you need to be hitting to achieve your desired results. For example when doing mile repeats on the track if your goal is to hit 7:30 and your first 400 is in 1:30, a 6:00 pace, things happen physiologically that are not the goal of the workout.
Paced workouts are just that, a consistent pace or speed over a given distance. The desired training effect is not always the same. These workouts are usually designed to develop stamina in someway, either muscular endurance or cardiovascular. In the above example, starting out like it’s the Olympics will fill you full of lactic acid and ruin your gait and instead of a strong controlled interval you struggle through the last half of the interval with less than perfect form. It will produce stress and a training effect, assuming you have adequate recovery from this workout. Just not the right type for the goal. Certainly not the best thing when developing a pacing strategy for a longer event such as a marathon or ironman distance race.
How do I as a coach take that for granted? When reviewing logs and asking questions to often I assume that the pace recorded was pretty even. If some one says that they may have went out to fast I may be thinking 15 even 30 seconds and then settled in to things. I’m usually not thinking that someone started out at a whole other level and faded to make the time. So the next week or block I have them go faster and they push more and so on. Often if a particular pace is the goal I will stick with the times planned in the beginning and the athlete starts to report that the workouts are getting easier. The problem isn’t necessarily that the athlete doesn’t get where they originally set out to go. The problem is that when done correctly and I am evaluating the training with the accurate information of the entire process things can be done to make training more efficient and the goals could be more accurately evaluated and possibly set higher.
So, what to do, what to do…
Athletes whether they have a coach helping them or are on their own should develop a sense of pace. Balancing a busy lifestyle with yet another workout is very challenging and this type of workout is not the most effective in producing results. It is however another skill that will make you a more rounded athlete and help you get the most out of your training. The big concern then becomes when to fit it in. Ideally this is something that is worked on in the off-season or early on. This is great for the pool, not so much for Northeast Ohio winters on the run. The best thing to do is once the weather breaks and you have some general endurance workouts or active recovery workouts is to head to the track for some intervals. When most think of intervals they think of “make you puke” efforts full of suffering, not this time. Smooth controlled speed is what you are looking for. Choose 3 different paces near your desired race pace. Distance that work well are 200’s and 400’s for running and 50’s and 100’s for swimming. Make the sets simple and do them in a controlled environment such as a track and pool.
The following are 2 example of workouts, one swimming and the other running.
Goal run pace 8:00 miles
6 x 400 RI (rest interval) 200 (1&2 1:58, 3&4 2:00, 5&6 2:06)
Goal swim pace 1:30/ 100 yds
8 x 100 RI 0:30 (1&2 1:25, 3&4 1:30, 5&6 1:35, 7&8 1:30)
Do these until you are able to hit the time with in a couple of seconds no matter what the order of times for each interval
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