Last night in a 1/2 hour of boredom at work, I read an article in Running Times about the difference between elite and the rest of us - besides natural talent. There were a variety of things but the one thing that stuck out (believe me it's not the first time I've heard it) was that most regular joes run at the same pace every day - ie they watch their Garmins to be sure they are not running too SLOW. The elites demonstrate a drastic difference in pace between long runs and recovery runs. Generally my "recovery runs" are slower than my long runs but not by much. The other thing they do is start very slow on their long runs and very gradually pick it up. I find I am busting butt to keep up with my selected group and run too fast at the start. So I'm going to try a couple of different things:
1 - run slow on my recovery runs - I'll bring my garmin to monitor distance but won't worry about speed - if anything, I'll use it to slow down.
2 - practice starting really easy on my long runs - I'll let the speedsters go and gradually pick up the pace through out the run.
I'll be curious to see if I catch the speedsters after a while when they are still going the same speed and I'm running faster and if I am generally more refreshed on my harder w/o days. I also think I can run more miles that way. Of course it will take a little longer but oh well.
3 - add a medium long day on Mondays - I'll gradually increase the distance. But I think that doing that will make me not worry that running slow on Sundays and Wednesdays will make me a slow runner.
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