THE ENDURANCE OF SPEED
WHAT HAPPENS IF RUNNERS TURN THE TRADITIONAL TRAINING MODEL UPSIDE DOWN AND TRAIN FOR SPEED BEFORE ENDURANCE? DR JASON KARP’S REVOLUTIONARY NEW METHOD COULD BE THE KEY TO PUSHING BEYOND YOUR PLATEAU AND EXCEEDING YOUR MARATHON AND HALF MARATHON GOALS
I was sitting outside at the local coffee shop with my chai latte when Sara met me after her 25km run. She had run six marathons, her fastest being 3:42. She had also run a couple of ultramarathons – an 80K and 100K. Her goal was to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but while she was running often, things weren’t going to plan and she wasn’t living up to her expectations. She was struggling – physically and mentally.
Clutching an iced coffee, Sara sat down to talk about her plan to qualify for Boston. ‘How was your run?’ I asked.
‘Good, but I feel slow,’ she replied. ‘Qualifying for the Boston Marathon is my dream, but I feel like I’m still far away.’
Let’s see how we can do this,’ I said. ‘Your Boston qualifying time of 3:35 is faster than your current lactate threshold pace, but it’s not possible to run a marathon faster than threshold pace. You need to become a faster runner, first.
I gave Sara my honest advice, even though it may have been difficult for her to hear. No runner wants to be told that they aren’t fast enough to meet their goal. ‘Okay,’ she said, after a pause. ‘We’ll do it your way.’ Over the next year, Sara agreed to take some time away from marathons and instead divert her focus to becoming a faster runner. It wasn’t easy to convince her; she had fallen for the allure of the marathon distance and the endurance training involved, which attracts so many runners to enter long-distance races. Humans like to push the limits of endurance, perhaps because endurance is one of the defining characteristics that make us human. So I understood where Sara was coming from.
Why speed-first works
OFTEN, RUNNERS’ PERFORMANCES plateau not because of what they do, but because of what they don’t do. And one of the things that many runners don’t do when they start running as adults is work on their basic speed. They never become fast runners.
What happens if runners turn the traditional model of distance training on its head and focus on speed first before working on endurance? If they train at the right speed rather than the right distance?
At first glance, the notion of speed training for a marathon might seem a bit ridiculous. It seems so contradictory to the long haul of the marathon that it ought to be rejected outright. But, this contradiction demands that the concept be considered. Because breakthroughs occur when you try something different.
One reason to train speed first is because it ensures that your training becomes more specific as the race approaches. Long runs, acidosis (lactate) threshold run
