In article <
[email protected]>, JBones wrote:
> Some days I can go out and approach my personal best time with absolute ease. Other days, I have
> to really grind and overcome both mental and physical obstacles to acheive the same time. My
> question is, does one workout produce more benefit than the other? I would think the harder runs
> do more for you because you have to surpass a psychological barrier. Any thoughts?
Avoid going all-out too frequently. Once a week is good enough. Most of your training should be at
an easy pace, though you should also have 1 training session each week that is moderately hard, and
one that is very hard.
See the webpage here
http://www.panix.com/~elflord/vdot.html
you can use this to estimate training paces. If you don't know how far your usual run is, just
guess it. The training pace based on the guess will work fine as long as you just use it on your
usual course.
The surest way to make sure that it's easy to run hard is to save your energy, and be ready for
those days when you want to run a PR.
On the other hand, there are some sources of discomfort that are unavoidable. Sometimes you will be
tired. Sometimes it's cold, wet, and miserable, or it's extremely hot. Yes, I think these runs do
have a certain character building value. I actually like running in cold weather and taking on the
elements, especially in a race. It's uncomfortable, but it's possible to run pretty well in
conditions that really aren't very comfortable.
Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/
