We’ve been discussing speed work in Run Your Best Life over the month of July, and many members of the group have mentioned they only have one or two paces: regular and sprinting. Rebels, it is so important to develop the skill of confidently running at different paces, and today, I’ll be showing you the benefits of this practice and how to do it.
So many people resist doing speed work and playing with their pace because it feels harder, but nothing worth going after is going to be easy at first. Even if right now you think you have no interest in getting faster and that you’re happy running at the same pace throughout a run, today, I’m highlighting why speed work is for you too.
Listen in today to discover the power of learning to run at different paces. This includes faster and slower, which is a lot harder than you might initially think. Training yourself to run outside of your comfy zone where it feels close to effortless keeps you stuck, and I’m sharing a workout that you can practice that will help you consciously run at all kinds of paces.
The Rebel Runner Roadmap is a 30-day online class where I teach you the fundamentals of running. This is a class where you’ll learn how to start running the right way, or how to up-level your running. From running form, strength training, stretching, to all the brain work, it’s all in there. Check it out here and get on the waiting list for the next round of enrollment …I can’t wait to see you there!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- Why it’s important to develop the skill of confidently running at different paces.
- The benefits of teaching yourself how to shift gears.
- How to start running faster.
- Why speed work isn’t just about learning how to run faster.
- A workout that will help you practice running at all kinds of paces.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Imagine your last half marathon. Did you start out feeling really energetic and maybe that first mile, you ran it faster than usual? Maybe even like a minute faster than usual? You’re checking your watch, you’re thinking, “Hell yeah, I’m way ahead of schedule. I’m so proud of myself. I’m going to set a PR if I keep this pace up.”
And you’re running and you’re running, it feels good, and then suddenly around mile six or maybe mile eight, you’re like, “Oh, this is starting to feel a little hard.” You’re like, “I’m running out of energy a little bit.” And then by mile 10, you’re basically just not doing your intervals anymore. You’re just walking and then the last three miles are a death march.
Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.
Hey rebels. Well, it’s official. We have a Peloton. I knew I would love it. I knew this. But I had no idea just how blown away I would be by the whole experience. I mean, this thing has so far exceeded my expectations and Andy’s expectations. He was a little skeptical. I kind of had to talk him into it a little bit and he’s like, I think just as excited as I am.
We waited two months for this thing to show up, but I was totally worth it. The bike itself is very exceptional quality, and seriously, my ass has been on a lot of spin bikes in the past 10 years. The Peloton is far and away the best and most thoughtfully made of all of them.
The classes are fucking amazing, there’s something for everyone. The ability to compete with other people taking the same class is super fun. I am not even a competitive person in the slightest, but I found myself yelling, “Suck it, Howard Braverman, I just passed your lazy ass,” on my first ride.
And side note, you don’t have to put your actual name on the leaderboard. I do not know why Howard Braverman did this. My leaderboard name is NYARunner if you want to follow me. Andy’s is Beefsquatch_ with an underscore at the end, and Bob’s Burgers fans will understand what that means.
Okay, the bike is amazing, you can search for rides by music type. I’ve been doing a lot of classic rock rides. My second ride, I did a Lizzo ride, which was just unspeakably awesome. The data aspect is amazing. It keeps track of your performance, and then the next time you ride it’s like, hey, at this point in your last ride, you were a little bit farther along, or hey, you’ve exceeded your past record.
So those stats are sort of great because they’re very much in the moment. They’re instantaneous feedback and they can give you that little extra push to work harder. So yeah, so I’ll share more about the whole thing in an upcoming episode when I get more familiar with all of the features.
Right now, I think I’ve done maybe five rides. I haven’t really explored a lot. I’ve just kind of been sticking with what seems obvious. But I did have a really cool moment when I was riding this morning. So I’m riding along and I have a #NYAR and #RYBL. So Run Your Best Life members use #RYBL and then I also have #NYAR for Not Your Average Runner.
And there’s actually quite a few people that are using that hashtag. And so I was kind of looking at the leaderboard, and all of a sudden, up pops somebody who’s got the NYAR hashtag, and I was like, yay. And I realized it was one of my clients.
And so I clicked the thing to give her a high-five. Her name is Blythe. And then she high-fived me back and I was like, this is amazing. She lives in Ohio, I live in New Jersey, and we both just like, happened to be on the bike doing the same class at the same time. So that was extremely fun.
So the other thing – this is kind of silly but also very serious. So Andy and I did have a little debate over what to name her. The bike, which is clearly a her. So he was really attached to the name Dottie for some reason, and I vetoed that hard. I’m like, that’s just a no.
And then he suggested Spinderella, which I was like, oh my god, that’s it. But then he’s like, wait no, what about Bikeal Angelo, like Micheal Angelo but Bikeal Angelo because the Bike helps you sculpt the body you want, I guess, then Bikeal Scott because we’re both kind of obsessed with The Office and it was getting all kinds of crazy.
So we decided to put it to an internet vote. Bikeal Angelo versus Spinderella. Spinderella was the clear winner. But we have decided we can each have our own personal name for the bike. I will obviously make us signs on the cricut because that’s apparently who I am now. Watch my Instagram stories for the updates.
Anyway, this week, I’m not here to talk about Peloton. I’m here to talk about your running pace. So July has been speed month in Run Your Best Life, and we are talking about all different paces. Conversation pace, tempo runs, race pace and sprints. And many, many members of the group have mentioned that they believe they only have one pace.
Or maybe two paces. Regular and sprinting. In other words, they have the pace that feels normal and natural and comfy, and then the one that feels hard as fuck. Rebels, it is so important to develop the skill of confidently running at different paces.
Imagine if you bought a car and it only went two speeds. It only went like, parking lot speed and highway speed. It’s crazy. You would return it immediately. It would be useless. That is not a good car to have. So running is kind of the same thing, and most of us have this sort of comfy pace that we like to run at, and those are the fun runs.
We can just relax into it, enjoy ourselves, it feels maybe not effortless but good. It feels good. It feels satisfying. It’s right smack in the middle of our comfort zone. And this, this is your conversation pace run where you could have a chat with somebody running next to you, it’s a pace you could sustain for a while, it’s your long run pace basically.
But if you want to get faster, you have to break out of that conversation pace and train harder. Because when all of your training is done at that comfortable pace, you get really good at that pace. But you don’t get better at running faster or harder.
So you’ve got to practice what you want to get better at. Being able to shift gears on demand from your comfy pace to a little bit more effort to a strong effort to an all-out effort and move back and forth between these paces is the key to becoming a faster runner. Because again, if you always train at the same pace, you get really good at that pace.
But the problem is it makes it even harder to really kick it into gear during a race, when you want to pass somebody or sprint across that finish line, or you see the finish line clock ahead of you and you’re like, oh my god, if I could just really pull out all the effort, maybe I could set a PR by a few seconds, but you’re not used to it, and your body is like, nope sorry.
So that’s kind of one of the benefits of teaching yourself to shift gears comfortably when you’re running. And not to mention, training at different paces, it just overall helps you build your stamina. So ultimately, your comfy pace feels even easier and you can sustain a faster pace at that comfortable level of effort.
Now, a lot of people resist doing speed work and drills and playing with their pace because it feels harder. Yeah, of course it does. It is harder. But if you’re sitting around complaining about not getting any faster, if you’re waiting for it to happen magically, you’re like, I run 20 miles a week, I don’t know why I’m getting faster, it’s because you’re practicing mile after mile after mile at a comfortable pace.
It’s not going to happen magically. You have to practice running the pace that you want to be at. First you do it in small amounts, and then for longer and longer periods of time until it gets easier. And it’s not going to feel easy in the beginning, and probably not even in the middle, and that is okay.
Nothing worth going after is going to be easy at first. When you first started running, it wasn’t like, “Oh look at that, it’s so easy, it’s like I’m flying.” No, it was hard. You did it anyway, it got a little easier, you kept going, and now look, you’re a runner.
Now, I also know there are some of you right now thinking, “This does not apply to me.” You’re like, hey, I’m not super interested in getting faster. And honestly, that’s how I feel most of the time. You’re like, I’m not super interested in getting faster, I don’t care about a finish line sprint, I just want to run my race at the same pace all the way through. I don’t want to struggle; I just want to enjoy myself without a lot of hard effort.
Well guess what? Speed work is for you too. So imagine your last half marathon. Did you start out feeling really energetic and maybe that first mile, you ran it faster than usual? Maybe even like a minute faster than usual? You’re checking your watch, you’re thinking, “Hell yeah, I’m way ahead of schedule. I’m so proud of myself. I’m going to set a PR if I keep this pace up.”
And you’re running and you’re running, it feels good, and then suddenly around mile six or maybe mile eight, you’re like, “Oh, this is starting to feel a little hard.” You’re like, “I’m running out of energy a little bit.” And then by mile 10, you’re basically just not doing your intervals anymore. You’re just walking and then the last three miles are a death march.
We’ve all been there in a half marathon. Maybe this happened to you in a 5K. I don’t know. But here’s what happens that you started out feeling so amazing and you ended it struggling your ass off. You started out too fast. You got excited, you let the race energy push you a little too fast, and you ran out of gas.
I talked about this in a lot of past podcasts. I’ll talk about it again. Speed work isn’t just about learning how to run faster. It’s about learning how to control your pace and run the appropriate pace for that period in the race. It’s knowing how to slow the fuck down on purpose when you need to so you can run negative splits, which simply means running the back half of your race faster than the front, rather than slowing down at the end and running faster in the beginning.
Running negative splits, finishing strong, feeling like when you cross that finish line, you’re like, yeah, I fucking killed that thing. So being able to slow down on purpose from your comfortable pace is very important, and a lot of you can’t do that. Or you think you can’t.
So why is it important? Because it helps you manage your energy so you do have some gas left in the tank at the end of your training runs to kick it up a notch and then at the end of your race. So it’s not just for people who want to set a PR every time. It’s for anybody who wants to have their effort level spread evenly out throughout their run.
They don’t want the front half of the run to feel easy and the back half to feel hard. Like, spread that energy level out. So devoting one workout per week, this is what I suggest for you, to running on purpose at different paces can help you not just get faster, but gain control over your running.
Because again, we all have that comfy pace, and what happens is our muscles get used to it, our body gets used to it, our heart and our lungs get used to it. They get really super-efficient at running at that one pace and then it’s really uncomfortable and hard to do anything different slower or faster.
Because I know, sometimes it feels like you just got the one speed, and you’re like, if I knew how to go faster Jill, I would do that. But girlfriend, you do know how. Because if you had to run for your life, if you were in the woods and you saw a bear and the bear started to chase you, you would haul ass. Of course, you could.
Your brain would override all that muscle memory and you would move those legs. But when there is not a bear chasing you, when there’s no fight or flight adrenaline, you have to be much more conscious and deliberate about it. And that’s where practicing different speeds comes in.
Now, some weeks you might practice sprints and just sprints. But I’m going to talk to you about a workout today that I think would be amazing for you to practice that has you doing all different kinds of paces to really start feeling your oats, so to speak, in that area.
So it starts with foot turnover, also known as cadence. This is a great tool to help you master your running pace. So your cadence, your foot turnover, I’m just going to use cadence for the rest of this podcast. Cadence is simply the number of times your feet touch the ground in one minute, in 60 seconds.
You have a cadence for that comfy running pace, you have a cadence for your comfy walking pace. And the key to managing your pace and going faster or slower is managing your cadence. It’s not taking longer steps. It’s taking more of them. When you take more steps per minute, you go faster. Fewer steps per minute, you go slower. This is the math.
So to find out your cadence, all you got to do is count. There’s a lot of fancy watches that’ll track your cadence for you. I don’t think they’re as accurate as you just using your brain to count. So look at your watch on a run interval. Count your steps for 30 minutes and then multiply by two. That’s your cadence.
I like to check it at the beginning, middle, and end of a run to see if it drops over time because this is an indicator that I’m running too fast at the beginning of my run. Because if I can’t maintain my cadence through my whole run, then I know I’m not managing my energy well, that I’m putting too much effort out in the beginning so that I got nothing left at the end.
I also recommend checking it for your walking too, because a lot of interval runners, they lose pace because they slow way down on their walk. So their run might be great, but then they’re like, bringing it down to a stroll on the walk instead of keeping up a brisk pace and they’re kind of losing some time there.
But we’re going to talk about it just in the perspective of running today. So I want you to find the cadence for your comfy run pace, and you know what that pace feels like. So the next time you go out for one of those runs, just check your cadence at the beginning, the middle, and end, and take the average. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.
Actually no, take the cadence at the beginning of your run. Let’s do that. Take the highest cadence. Now, I want you to start practicing running at a cadence that’s five beats per minute higher than that. Practice it. And practice it means don’t just try it once and say that’s not fun. It means you’re going to dedicate a whole workout to playing with your cadence.
So running five beats per minute higher than what your comfortable pace is at requires more effort. But you will also notice that you are faster. Really notice that. It might feel awkward, it might feel hard, that’s because you’re putting out more effort and you are getting out of that muscle memory zone that you know so well, that your body feels so good at.
Now, see what happens. So you’ve practiced, and I’m going to give you some instructions for a workout to do this, but you’re going to practice that higher pace. I also want you to practice taking your cadence and deliberately dropping it by five beats per minute. And that might feel awkward too. It does to a lot of people.
They’re like, it doesn’t feel good to run that slow. But it’s important for you to be able to control your cadence at will. The reason that it feels uncomfortable is it’s outside your muscle memory zone. Your body likes to have things feel natural, likes being able to run without spending a lot of brain power on it. So running faster or slower than your conversation pace, it just requires awareness.
So here’s a workout that I want you to try to start practicing this concept. So you’re going to warm up with your usual five-minute walk, and then I want you to do your normal intervals at that comfortable, relaxed pace that you love so much for about 10 minutes.
Then I want you to rotate through slower, faster, and fastest in five interval sets. So basically, after your 10-minute comfortable pace intervals, you’re going to do five intervals at five steps per minute slower than your comfy pace. And then you’re going to do five intervals at five steps per minute faster than your comfy pace. And then you’re going to five intervals at 10 steps per minute faster than your comfortable pace and then work your way back down again.
And then if you’ve got time, you can go up and down that ladder one more time. So I recommend that you download a metronome app to your phone. And there’s a million free ones out there, to count out the beat so that you can run to the beat. So that you’re not just guesstimating.
Download a metronome app to your phone to count out the beat, or find songs with the beats per minute that you need, and actually just set up your playlist so you can sort of run to the beat. And the beat will guide you, what pace you need to be running at one time.
So I want you to practice this once a week for a month. See what happens. And you are going to be surprised at, first of all, how difficult it is to run slower on purpose. A lot of times when we start to run slower, it’s because our body is getting really tired.
But being able to run slower on purpose and hold yourself back for the first few miles of a race is a super important skill because it, first of all, allows you to save energy for the backend of the race, and also means you’re not going to get caught up in all the hype of everybody else going out too fast.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a race, I’ve watched people just take off, and I’m looking at them, I’m thinking, that’s faster than they should be running right now. And then lo and behold, five miles later, I see them at an aid station gulping down Gatorade, sitting down, looking like they’re done.
So don’t be that person. And learn how to manage your pace. So this workout that I just gave you today is a great place to start. I’d love to have you post about your experience in the Not Your Average Runner Podcast community, the Facebook group. Let me know how it goes. I want to hear.
Okay my friends, I love you. Stay safe, get your ass out there and run. I will see you in the next episode.
Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.
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