Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Mix and Match

ORN: 50 min @ 5/1

For those of you who follow closely, you'll notice that I'm doing 50 minutes, but altering the run/walk ratio. This keeps me on my feet for the same amount of time, but, as I increase my run ratio the amount of time I RUN increases. Obvious, I know.

Changing the run/walk ratio is a great way to get different workouts in the same amount of time. An EASY 50 minute workout might be running 3 minutes and walking 2. You might do 4/2, or 4/1. You could even move all the way up to 9/1. It doesn't matter.

What matters is finding a way to vary your runs so that your body doesn't get "locked in". The shorter the run interval, the faster you can run. The longer, the slower.

This way you can keep your total workout time the same but still have LOTS of variety.

Waddle on,

John

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John - can you elaborate a little? Are you saying I'm okay in choosing to plan my workouts by time instead of by distance? (When I'm not in race-training mode, of course!) I've always scheduled myself that way, but my runner friends look at me funny when they say "what did you run today" and I answer "45 minutes" instead of N miles. I used to go for set distances, but I was KILLING myself because I'm under a lot of time pressure and kept thinking that if I hustled I could get done sooner. I'm happier and a whole lot healthier just running for time.

William said...

That is exactly what he is saying. All my weekday runs are time based ranging from 30-60 minutes, and my weekend long runs are by KM.

I even know people who train their weekend runs by time. Once you figure out your time to complete whatever event it is you are doing, train to that approximate time.

Check out Johns book Marathoning for Mortals. This details most of this training by time,