Uncategorized

I’ve long been a fan of threshold workouts (or tempo runs or whatever term you want to use). However, I’ve also been intrigued by the concept of polarized training, which essentially says threshold workouts are not all that productive.

So this debate between advocates of polarized training and advocates of threshold running struck me as quite interesting.

In short, while the idea of polarized training is still intriguing, I’m going to keep doing my tempo runs and other threshold type workouts. I know they work well for me and I strongly believe they are beneficial for runners in general.

Polarized training or not?Read More »

Very early in my running life, I was introduced to hill repeats. Over the course of my life, I’ve done all kinds of different hill repeat workouts. While I haven’t always loved the workouts (they can be brutal) I’ve always been a fan of the results.

What makes hill repeats so valuable? A few answers can be found here, as well as some ideas for workouts.

Why hill repeats are good for youRead More »

I had a talk with one of you this past weekend about easy runs. It made me realize that I clearly did a poor job stressing the importance of running easy on easy runs. So I’m going to address that here.

The easy run is a critical part of our training. Even elites run roughly 80% of their miles at an easy pace. However, many runners do their easy runs too fast. This increases your risk of injury and takes away from the quality you can get on your hard days. Make sure you’re running them easy enough.

Here’s a blog post I wrote earlier this year on how to do your easy runs.