80/20 Running

As readers of my blog probably know, when I have a goal race on the horizon, I tend to dive in head first with my training and then keep ratcheting up the miles without too much attention to pace. But doing miles at any pace means that there are usually quite a few that are run too fast. This has left me feeling flat and burned out once my goal race/marathon is finished. I now realize I need to train at paces that will keep me feeling fresh while still giving me the best bang for my buck from speed sessions.

I read 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald a while back, and although I bought into his philosophy at the time, I never could bring myself to run as slowly as the plan's training intensities prescribe. I don't like slow, because I want to feel the burn of a good workout. This is what Fitzgerald calls running at "habitual pace", which is a pace run faster than necessary for peak fitness. A habitual pace is one that's difficult enough that you feel like you're getting a good workout because it causes strain. However it's the area where paces are too fast, causing unnecessary stress, yet not fast enough to allow you to reap the benefits of speed work.

So, what does mean for my training? Well I started reading 80/20 Running from the beginning in order to come up with a solid plan for the long term. In the meantime, I took a cue from Xaarlin's tempo training where she throws in some race pace miles in her long runs (which she used successfully to prepare for the Carmel Marathon last year). So, I'm swearing off running any miles at what I'll call "junk pace". Instead I plan to run easy for 80% and then throw in 20% of relatively fast miles. This will also keep my runs interesting - I can look forward to a couple fast miles while shuffling through all of those slow miles, instead of waiting until the next day for a speed workout.

In order to measure if I'm actually running 80/20, I came up with some general parameters (for the moment) of what I consider fast, slow and junk paces:

For example, here's how my run on Sunday run breaks down according to these paces:

Sunday 80/20 run

So, I ran a "perfect" 80/20 run without any "junk" miles! Running all of those slow miles is harder than it seems because if I'm not looking at my watch, I might accidentally run a moderately fast mile and end up with a 70/20 run or even a 60/30 run. In any case, I hope to keep this pattern up until I finish reading the book, which will probably be around the time of the Shamrock Shuffle. At that point, I will hopefully have a more scientific training plan laid out (even without having a goal race on the horizon). In any case, for the next few weeks I'm going to see if a dash of fast mixed with a lot of slow helps me to become a better runner.

Running in 70 degree February weather last week