Want to run smoke your run?

Me too.  But don’t buy into the need to pound pavement for miles on end to get to your goal.  Here’s a way to do it by running only three times a week, and saving your shins by doing low-impact cardio on non-running days.  This workout is designed to be done on a treadmill but can be adapted to go outside.

The Convergence Workout

Basically there are three variables in any run:  1) your speed; 2) the distance you go; and 3) the time it takes to run it.

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The convergence workout takes all three of these variables, trains them separately, and then gradually increases the difficulty until your performance on each of the three variables converges with your goal.

Goal

Pick what management guru Jim Collins calls a BHAG..that’s a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  Don’t be shy – you’re capable of way more than you think your are.  You need a goal that excites you, that you can visualize and think to yourself:  “man, if I could run that fast, I would be ROCKIN’ it!  Decide how fast you want to run, for how far and give yourself a deadline for achieving it.  In my case I want to run 5 miles in 35 minutes and improve my time from 12 minute miles to 7 minute miles.  I want to do it 100 days from the beginning of my training program.

Monday – Time:  On Monday you’re going to focus on time.  You want to experiment to run (or walk) as fast as you can for your goal time.  For your Monday workout, focus on the time you want to take to run your goal run.  In my case 35 minutes.  To establish a baseline, I run as fast as I can for 35 minutes.  When I started this was 5 mph.  So, I set the treadmill (use a gps or pedometer if running outside) to 5 mph and huffed and puffed for 35 minutes and barely made it.  Then I gradually increased the speed each week for the 14 weeks of my challenge.  I’m currently at 7.5 mph and increasing.

Wednesday – Speed:  The next variable is speed.  You should get practice running the speed you want to run.  Set the treadmill for the exact speed that, if done for your goal time would yield your goal distance.  In my case 8.6 miles per hour will  get me to 5 miles in 35 minutes.  The first time I did it, I could do it for two-minutes!  TWO MINUTES.  But that was my baseline.  The key was to aggressively increase the difficulty each week until I made it to 35 minutes.  I still have a long ways to go – I can do it for 7 minutes now.  But that’s still more than three times longer than when I started!  Be careful to warm up well and stretch before this run in particular.  The speed puts more stress on all your joints.

Saturday – Distance:  I like to do my distance run on Saturday, I don’t have same time constraints as I do other days of the week.  But if you tend to stay out late on Fridays or if weekends don’t work for you, feel free to do the workout on Friday.  They key is you have a couple days from your speed workout.  For this workout, set the treadmill on a slightly slower speed and run until you get to your goal distance.  The first time I did this workout I ran 5 miles in 1 hour and 7 minutes.  Then in each subsequent week, you want to drop your time as much as you can.  I’m right around 45 minutes now and expect my progress to slow until I get to 35 minutes.

Each of these workouts teaches your body to succeed in a different way – the time workout gives you a feeling for how much time you’ll be going at it when you reach your goal; the speed workout wires your brain to know how fast one foot has to land in front of the other; finally, the distance workout gives you the feeling for how far you need to go.  Each of these variables will slowly converge.  Your Monday workout will get faster; your Wednesday workout will get longer, and your Saturday workout will get shorter until at the end each workout is very close to the same – your goal speed, for the goal time…which yields your goal distance.  Make sense?

As always, check back with us and let us know how it’s going and let me know whatever questions you have.  Now get out there and kick some butt!