IMPROVING YOUR SPEED: TRACK WORKOUTS
This article is intended for runners who have completed at least one marathon and wish to improve their time. If you are a first-time marathoner, we strongly recommend that you focus on endurance first! You should not be running speed workouts for your first marathon.
What is a Track Workout?
A track workout is just that, a workout performed on a high-school or college running track. They usually take about an hour to complete, and are typically broken into three parts:
·
Warm-up
·
Workout
·
Cooldown
We'll talk about these in more detail below.
How Often?
No more than once a week for track workouts. You can run both a track workout and a tempo workout in the same week, but take care not to overtrain. Tuesday night is a good night for track workouts, as you have recovered enough from your long run, and can still get your other workouts in.
There are 5 workouts in this article; if you are doing a marathon, 10 track workouts leading up to your marathon should be plenty! Time them so that your last workout occurs about 10 days before your race.
Figuring out Your Pace
Your body has two basic mechanisms for delivering glucose to your cells.
· The 'aerobic' pathway depends on the presence of oxygen to transport the energy; it's a little slower, but you have vast reserves that can be delivered to the muscles using this method. It's the method that you use during day to day activity. You're also improving the efficiency of this pathway through your endurance training on our weekend workouts.
· The 'anaerobic' pathway is your 'quick-burn' mechanism. It's the pathway used to deliver energy to your cells immediately. It's the pathway that's used in the "fight or flight" mechanism (aided by the presence of adrenaline), or when you go into an all out sprint. The transport mechanism is much faster, but you burn through your available stores quite quickly. After a little rest, the stores are replenished, but with each effort, lactic acid builds up in the cell. A by-product of anaerobic activities is lactic acid, which builds up inside the cell. Eventually, the buildup makes the cell less efficient at responding, and your muscles get tight & worn out, and you need to rest to let the cells clean themselves out.
You should be running these workouts right at your
anaerobic threshold, which you hit just as you start to really work for oxygen.
I recommend to my runners that they run approximately their 10k workout pace.
That means that if you can run a 50 minute 10k (around an 8 minute per mile pace),
you should run a 400m in about 2 minutes. You should be able to respond
to someone you're running with in short sentences or single words. You should
NOT be sprinting through these workouts.
The Workouts
As mentioned above, there are three parts to a track workout, the warm-up, the workout, and the cooldown.
A track is 400 meters around. Each straightaway is roughly 100 meters, and each curve is roughly 100 meters. (The curved section is actually a little longer, but for our purposes, this is accurate enough.) So think of the track as being divided into 4 100 meter sections. Four times around the track is approximately 1 mile.
Common practice is to run "counter-clockwise" around the track. This means your left arm will be toward the infield.
The first part of the warm-up consists of 1/2 to 1 mile (2 to 4 laps), done at an easy jog. This should be at your slowest pace; you're just shaking the kinks out and getting a little blood flow to your muscles. After you're a little warmed up, do a series of 'lifts' along the straight-aways. These are NOT sprints; they're just a gradual buildup from an easy jog to a medium pace. Run the length of the straightaway, and then slow jog the curves.
After you've warmed up, you're ready for the main part of the workout. Generally, it's good to start at the beginning of one of the straight-aways. Workouts are broken into sets, which are further broken into reps. You have short recovery between reps, and longer recovery between sets. Let's look at the first set of the first workout:
· 3 x 400m medium pace, w/200m recovery walk between reps
· 1 laps recovery (easy jog)
This shorthand tells you to start at the straightaway, run
around the track once at medium pace, and then walk 200 meters. That'll put you
at the opposite corner from where you started. You then run another 400m,
followed by another 200m walk, which puts you back where you started. Run a
third 400m, putting you back at the start again. That's the first set. Jog one
lap easy, and you're back ready to start set 2.
After you've completed the workout, do the cooldown. This will help push some of the lactic acid out of your cells and help you to recover more quickly.
Enjoy!
Coach Greg
Workout #1
Warm-up
· 2-4 laps easy jog
· 4 x 100m lifts (medium pace on straight-aways, jog the curves)
Set #1
· 3 x 400m medium pace, w/200m recovery walk between reps
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
Set #2
· 3 x 400m medium pace w/200m recovery walk between reps
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
Set #3
· 3 x 400m medium pace w/200m recovery walk between reps
Cooldown
· 2 laps easy jog
Workout #2
Warm-up
· 2-4 laps easy jog
· 4 x 100m lifts (medium pace on straight-aways, jog the curves)
Workout
· 1 x 400m
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
· 1 x 800m
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
· 1 x 1200m
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
· 1 x 800m
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
· 1 x 400m
Cooldown
· 2 laps easy jog
Workout #3
Warm-up
· 2-4 laps easy jog
· 4 x 100m lifts (medium pace on straight-aways, jog the curves)
Set #1
· 1 x 300m w/100m meter recovery
· 1 x 400m w/200m meter recovery
· 1 x 500m w/300m meter recovery
· 600 meters recovery (easy jog)
Set #2
· 1 x 300m w/100m meter recovery
· 1 x 400m w/200m meter recovery
· 1 x 500m w/300m meter recovery
· 600 meters recovery (easy jog)
Set #3
· 1 x 300m w/100m meter recovery
· 1 x 400m w/200m meter recovery
· 1 x 500m w/300m meter recovery
Recovery
· 2 laps cooldown
Workout #4
Warm-up
· 2-4 laps easy jog
· 4 x 100m lifts (medium pace on straight-aways, jog the curves)
Workout
· 1 x 600m w/200m meter recovery
· 1 x 800m w/400m meter recovery
· 1 x 1000m w/600m meter recovery
· 1 x 1000m w/600m meter recovery
· 1 x 800m w/400m meter recovery
· 1 x 600m
Cooldown
· 2 laps easy jog
Workout #5
Warm-up
· 2-4 laps easy jog
· 4 x 100m lifts (medium pace on straight-aways, jog the curves)
Workout
Set #1
· 5 x 200m (start at center of straightaway, end on center of other, jog across field for recovery)
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
Set #2
· 5 x 200m
· 1 lap recovery (easy jog)
Set #3
· 5 x 200m
Cooldown
· 2 laps easy jog
Running with a Group
If you've never done a track workout before, you may want
to hook up with a local group. The coach who taught me to run, Pat Connelly,
runs track workouts every week at