Hello my little rutabagas, it is Cory. Sorry I have been MIA. This is going to be a kind of poorly structured post about speed/endurance balance in training through running, which will partially attempt to answer Paige's questions in the post below. NOTE: in this post, I am talking about training for the mile/for running, which is not 100% synonymous with training for frisbee. If you have been cross-training and getting your cardio in some other way on days 1, 2, 4, and 7 (or whichever ones you choose) of the rotation we suggested in the first post, that is chill.
OK, as I understand it, the ideal "training interval" (to answer Paige's third question) is... ALL OF THEM. You want a mix because for reducing your mile time, and for frisbee, you need speed, endurance, and speed endurance. Say you are going to do a running workout 6 times a week with one off day (NOTE: this is not what we asked you to do, and it may not be possible given the weather where you are... but hypothetically), your days would ideally look like this:
- Every day: Abs rotation
- Day 1: long run (~40 minutes), strength stuff-- lifting or Hannah's awesome workout or something else from an earlier post
- Day 2: mid-distance intervals (800s and 400s) at 125% of your CURRENT mile pace. So if your current mile is 8 minutes, try to do the 800s in ~3:35 and the 400s in ~1:45. A good workout would be 3 800s and 4 400s. One-to-one rest, so for every rep, rest for as long as that rep took you.
- Day 3: long run, strength
- Day 4: long intervals (4x1000s or 1x1200s) at 100% of your current FASTEST mile. Like, say you can run 1 eight minute mile if you are doing yo very best, but then you slow down. Well, then your pace at 100% of that speed for 1000m would be 5 minutes (1000/1600 * 8 minutes), so your time per rep is 5 mintues. That may feel easy-ish (I wouldn't know, running never feels easy to me) the first time, BUT you are going to hit that 5-minute time for ALL FOUR of your reps.
- Day 5: long run, strength (these long runs can be wayyy slow yo)
- Day 6: sprint workout. If you want ideas about sprint workouts, I wrote a thing about them here (click this link). NOTE: DO NOT do sprint workouts below 35 degrees. Like I said at the top, this whole workout schedule is just a hypothetical scenario, not a real-life mandate to do these crazy running workouts if your weather conditions or anything else isn't favorable.
- Day 7: rest
SO, if we all wanted to be champion milers, we would do something like that. However, we don't... we want to be champion frisbee players, and frisbee requires all sort of explosiveness and agility and hand-eye coordination and, ya know, throwing ability that are not involved in running miles, and a lot of the other things posted on this blog work on developing those skills and muscles.
Alrighty, this was your daily PSA about running training. Please return to your regular activities. PS it is 9:30 in Namibia... time zones are weeeird. And I miss you all.
