9/20/11

Tuesday
“…then don’t fix it”
So we have been experimenting with taking a ten or eleven day cycle and going sprint day, two days easy, sprint day, three days easy, tempo day, three days easy and then repeat. The cycles alternate with a tempo block run and the next cycle has cruise intervals, tempo paced bouts of three to fifteen minutes with about one minute rest for each five minutes just run. This has been our third or fourth cycle and it has been going really well.
On the sprint days, it is really just intuitive belief that drives our feeling of accomplishment. But with the tempo runs, the hallmark workout to measure endurance, we have been seeing a good return on the training effect. These gains in fitness have been met with mild surprise due to our twenty minute jaunts or days off in between track days. The long work days and traveling rigors of the last eight weeks has been part of the reason we have chosen to train this way. That and the part of the year it is, spring track is a ways off and winter is still well in the distance. However, as things start to relax, I am reminded “if it ain’t broke…”