Keeping your Routine Fresh
Is your 5k, 10k, or half marathon training becoming a bit stale? Try these three things to keep your training fresh and help you wake up excited to train:
Make your long run a quality workout
In a 5k, 10k, or half marathon build, you will generally find yourself increasing your long run each week for 3-4 weeks, back it off for a week, then start another build. This is a great way to safely build time on feet and increase your aerobic base. However, keeping the same easy pace for your long run may start to get old (and boring) quick. Instead, try several weeks of making your weekend long run as a main workout for the week. How do you do this? Instead of doing two quality workouts per week plus your long run, drop one of those quality sessions and build it into your long run. For example, if your long run is 10 miles, try doing the rep scheme of 2 miles easy, 1 mile at tempo. This allows you to still get in your long run, while also getting in a really solid quality session that includes 3 miles of tempo.
2. Inject fartleks into your weekly routine
We all love a nice, clean workout plan that has clear reps and rest intervals. As someone who grew up running track, nothing speaks to me more than seeing something as clean and clear as 8x400 at your current 5k pace with 45 seconds rest. However, maybe you are feeling a bit rebellious and don’t want a well written workout. Maybe, you want to go rogue and run hard for however long you want with as much rest as you want. This is where fartlek workouts come in! Swedish for speed play, fartlek runs give you as the runner complete control of how fast and how far you run, as well as the amount of rest. You can do these at mile pace, 5k pace, tempo, or vary them up throughout your training run. You will end up settling into a rhythm, but fartleks give you a lot of control throughout your workout. When out for your next training run, try doing a few fartlek intervals. My favorite speed play training session growing up was doing fartleks every 2-3 telephone poles with equal or longer rest in between.
3. Include mixed modality training
You are already hopefully including specific weight training into your program. Whether it be specific strength days, rowing, ski erg, bike, or HIIT workouts, you should be doing something other than running. This not only makes you a stronger overall athlete, but can also help increase your resistance to injury. If you have been training for a while, you may want to experiment with including some mixed modality training into your routine. What do I mean by mixed modality training? I mean including several different pieces of training all into one quality session. For example, a quality workout may be AMRAP 30 (as many rounds as possible in 30 minutes), 400 meter run, 500 meter row, 20 weighted lunges. With a mixed modality workout, you are killing two birds with one stone by including running and strength training into one quality session. This will challenge you in a way you may not have experienced before, as your legs will feel a bit more “jello-y” after the row and weighted lunges.
