“Speed work” “easy run” (because every run sucks tight now and none of them are easy and if I run slower it seems even harder??) “tempo run” and so on. I’m basically hopping on the treadmill and trying to get my walk intervals down to 30sec (1min feels a LOT better at this point) and my run intervals to a higher speed (it’s always at least 6, and I’m now able to maintain 6.2ish for my 3mi runs and have been pushing the first mile up to around 6.5-6.7)
For years, I always trained at continual pacing. I almost always found myself despising the training and definitely dreading the long runs. I only kept at it because I enjoyed the reward of the race itself.
I too was one of those runners who said, "If I can go faster, why shouldn't I?" A "PR the day" type mindset. But it's when I accepted the "train slow to race fast" mantra that my PRs dropped dramatically.
Training slow to race fast quite literally changed both my enjoyment of running and success as a runner. My soreness level went down substantially in training and I found that I enjoyed the training so much more. But the real results came in races themselves.
I started training slow to run fast in the summer of 2018. My first half marathon using this philosophy came in September 2018. On race day, I was a mental wreck. I was on the struggle bus beginning around mile 3 or so. I felt like the race was a complete disaster. And yet in spite of how much I struggled during the race, I still cut 3 minutes off my previous PR.
My next races after that was my first marathon and Dopey. I had spent years believing I could not finish a marathon. Well, I not only somehow managed to not only finish the marathon, but also enjoy it so much that I signed up for a second marathon and Dopey.
Last summer, I contracted a nasty summer cold that sidelined me for nearly a month. I had a September half marathon on the horizon followed by Dopey in January 2020 and
@DopeyBadger played it conservative to keep me injury free as I started training over from scratch. Every single training run was slow. No attempts at all to increase pace. I headed into the race planning to take it slow and just finish. I didn't want to even care about time. It was the same race that I had spent on the struggle bus in 2018. Well, this time I still took the race nice and easy. Barely pushing myself in the race, I still managed to cut another minutes off my previous PR.
Then came this year's WDW Marathon. And the heat. The heat and humidity so brutal that they had to shorten the course for runner safety. While I certainly felt the heat and humidity from the very beginning, I also felt very strong for the entire race. I was behind the course cutoff, so I will never know what my actual time would have been. But based on what my pace actually was for the miles I did run, I was ahead of my previous year's time in spite of the conditions.