Are you gearing up for a 5K or 10K race? These are popular race distances to run since they are short and fast. And because the pace is going to be faster than that marathon you’ve been thinking about, it’s important to get some speedwork in your workouts.
Speedwork is important to add in to your workouts to increase your endurance and pace for that upcoming race. I like running to a local track on some workouts, which for me is less than 2 miles away. Once I’m on the track, I’ll run a small combination of 200s and 400s, then run back home.
If you don’t have access to a track, you can get the same benefit with different variations of speedwork. You can pick a starting point on your run, then pick up the pace for the next couple of minutes, then slow down again for a recovery. A variation of this would be to run faster up to certain location and commit yourself to that point without slowing down. If you’re able to time this split, then check it against the next time you run this same workout for comparison.
Tonight I went out for a 4-mile workout, at about 7 pm. Back in the summer during this time of day, there was plenty of sun left in the sky. Now, it’s dark out so it can be a bit more challenging working with the traffic.
I decided to run with an ipod and listen to a podcast along the way. Most of the time, I’ll just run without any music; just me and the solitude of the run. But every so often, the ipod provides great entertainment and is welcome on the workout. Running in the dark and with the music / podcast playing, I need to be careful not to turn the volume up too loud to the point of not being able to hear oncoming traffic. Obviously, that could be detrimental if you miss the sound of a horn or any audible sign of a car coming at you.
I tend to run in the street by choice, preferring this over the sidewalk. Technically, the street is a bit more forgiving on the legs since it tends to be more textured, and softer as a surface to run on than the sidewalk. But the tradeoff is the slant that the street has over a sidewalk with a flatter, more even surface. This slant doesn’t seem to bother my knees, at least not noticeably.
Tips for running at night:
run in the direction of oncoming traffic
wear a white-colored shirt, or even a vest for best visibility
keep the volume down on your mp3 player so you can hear the traffic too
watch out stepping on rocks or any ankle-twisting obstacles
