Speed work making me SLOWER??

How do you feel after the faster sessions?

The most plausible scenario is that you’re not recovering sufficiently and you’re sluggish in your follow up sessions. You’re tired.

Firstly can I ask what times you run? You might not necessarily be good at the short stuff as you say, but if your long stuff is slow too then it will explain a lot.

Also, will need to know what your current week is like. Could be that adding this session in weekly has led to overtraining, especially if you have removed an easy day to implement it. Similarly if you replaced the threshold stuff with it, could have a negative effect too, as threshold stuff is more important. Especially if you are racing, having this session might not be useful. Maybe you are doing too much hard runs in general and need more easy runs..

Ok I am a sophomore girl and run an 11:39 full 2 mile and 5:15 1500. Both are indoor times since I’ve never raced outdoor. And then my XC 5k is 18:42, which is a legit time because it’s the state meet course. That course is very hilly which I actually find I am better at than flat courses so that was an advantage for me. I actually got 4th in the state there, which would never even be possible for me to do in track.

I have a whole bunch of running books and do lots of research on here so I kinda coach myself. I do a two week cycle.

Mileage is 30-35

Week 1

Mon: threshold reps (totaling ~7k in volume)

Tues: easy run

Wed: easy run

Thurs: a little bit of threshold (~2k), followed by 800-mile pace work (which I added in recently. This used to be a steady state, fartlek, 10k pace, progression run day).

Fri: easy run

Sat: long run (8 miles), not easy but not hard

Sun: nothing

Week 2

Mon: easy run

Tues: threshold reps again

Wed: easy run

Thurs: easy run

Fri: 10x400 @ 3k/mile pace with 2 min or 200 jog rest depending on what I feel like idk (also added this recently and also used to be a steady state, fartlek, 10k pace, or progression run day).

Sat: easy long run

Sun: nothing

Easy runs are actually easy because I use my Garmin’s hr readings. I stay from 140-150. I also do strides sometimes, like once a week.

Hopefully that helps

Thanks for the background.

Hmmm.

So, you're running six days a week. You might, for example, want to drop one of those easy runs and use the extra day to recover. If you're feeling sluggish, just listen to your body.

In terms of speed, another suggestion would be to shorten the session, but focus more on quality. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of 10x400 sessions, in terms of focussing on speed. You might be better off looking to go 3 to 4 seconds quicker, but reducing the number of reps. I look at that and think you might just be doing another threshold session, thinking it's speed work. And when you do the 200s, do fewer, but go much faster than your 800 speed.

You might be in the situation where doing less helps you more.

Finally, don't let it get you down. There's nothing wrong with working on your strengths rather than worrying about perceived weaknesses. If you feel like you shine in XC, then carry on running thresholds and hills.

It sounds like a pretty solid couple of weeks of training to me.

The only things I could come up with is that it's going to take you a bit of time to adapt to this type of training. If you are working harder in these new sessions then it's going to slow down your easy run pace because you have to recover more. I wouldn't cut out a day of running or any of your miles. I would keep plugging away and you will come around as you get stronger.

The other thing you should do is to check your iron.

Weird. Your training looks pretty good to be honest.

I'd say that 10 x 400 @ mile pace / the other 800-mile pace session are quite tough though and not necessarily something you need to do weekly. You can work a lot on top speed by just implementing 10 x 25 seconds hill rep at 95% speed each week, and keep that as your only speed workout. Lower impact and probably same benefits as the track work. No track work needed. The benefits of the 400m repeats will plateau pretty quick, and you will find yourself just building unecessary fatigue and burnout. If you sub it out for the hill reps you can focus more on the beneficial tempo/thresholds..
Threshold stuff looks good, just make sure its actually below LT2 state, if anything I would consider adding a bit more threshold distance in reps on the 2nd threshold session of the week.

Time for some blood work

It takes a little bit. Not that easy to explain. Various parts of your body progress at different rates and take a while to coordinate. Also, not every part of your body is built to the same standard - some people have deformities, known and unknown. Give it time and stay positive.

They say you have to run slow to run fast, which probably means running fast slows you down. The world is all opposite. You have to sleep to stay awake and vice versa. You have to do food input for cacca output and vice versa.

There are people who respond poorly or not at all to interval work. I'm one of them. I gave up on interval work after college but had times where I tried it again and got slower than I'd been before. Mostly I just did steady runs at a reasonably decent pace and sometimes did some hill reps.

But the part of your post I most want to ask about is why being the only distance runner on your team means you can't ask your coach about this? It seems to me your coach should have a fair amount of time to talk with you if you're the only distance runner on the team.

Also, just to add, don’t give up on the speed work. Give it another six weeks, see how you feel.

But from how you describe your strengths and enjoyment of XC, you might just be someone who responds really well to continuous threshold work. My old coach used to say ‘strong not fast’. Admittedly, he’d then scream ‘faster’ at the end of each rep, but every motto needs some wriggle room.

The answer is not simple, but I will try to be clear.

Basically, your "base" is built by running anything slower than the first threshold (lactate threshold or roughly 80% max HR). This raises your "durability", ie the relationship between race distances. (A great relationship may be 5:00 1600 & a 10:30 3200, a poor relationship may be 5:00 1600 & a 11:00 3200).

Consider this Zone 1

Running between your LT and Critical Power (CP) (30 min race pace or roughly 90% max HR) teaches your body to use lactate as a fuel (think tempos or cruise intervals) and this is what most people associate their "base" with, but is more race specific than they realize. This raises your your LT and your CP while also maintaining your durability and your vVO2 Max.

Consider this Zone 2

Running faster than your MLSS improves your speed at VO2 Max (your pace for 6-8 min all out), however, after initial adaptations, will lower your durability.

Consider this Zone 3

What you are describing is taking away some Zone 2 work in order to add Zone 3 work. What happens in that case, is you are no longer maintaining as much durability and not improving your LT or CP as much, but you are increasing your vVO2 Max. This is fantastic for peaking, as you can then drop the Zone 3 work and maintain your vVO2 Max with Zone 2 work and feel fresh. If you do NOT want to peak, the answer is to add in more Zone 1 running (such as longer cool downs after Zone 3 work) OR only add Zone 3 work in addition to Zone 2 work instead of replacing it.

My fix? Just add some very slow jogging to both your workouts' cool downs and think about going for a slow jog instead of a day off. When you need to race fast, take out all the Zone 3 work and just do mostly Zone 2 work with a few 100-200m strides with short rest afterwards (before the cool down).

Racing also counts as Zone 3 work, which is why if you race frequently, you need very little Zone 3 work for the mile and up.

TL;DR

Your only issue was removing your threshold volume and not increasing your easy volume to make up for it (for immediate gains). If you are a ways out from peaking, this is perfectly fine, just drop the fast workouts and replace it back with threshold workouts when you want to start racing and then drop easy volume (NOT threshold) to peak.

I'm about a minute faster on the same mileage. First thing I'd say is don't do two workouts every week. You are tired and it increases risk of injury. Also drop down to 4 or 5 days. I do 4 days and like to do 8-10 miles.

Okay, so training is more art than science. Every athlete responds a little differently. Slow twitch guys tend to do better off more mileage and less speed. Some guys are even so slow twitch that they run best off only easy runs, long runs, and plenty of races

My guess I'd that you're a high responder to speec work so you're doing too much of it and getting burnt out on it. As a high school runner, you get so much speed work from all the racing you do. Maybe try just threshold, racing, and easy runs. I would recommend one threshold session regardless of whether you have 1 or 2 meets that week. If you have only 1 meet, do a long run that week. No long run if you have 2 meets to reduce risk of burn out.

Ok. So I thought as a strength runner it would help to work on my speed.

But instead I’m gathering that it’s best to stick to stuff I’m best at/keep up the aerobic stuff and do less speed??

This is good info because I thought the opposite.

And for the coach question, my coach works with the sprinters and kind of lets me do whatever, since I’m the only one. I don’t really mind and like having independence anyway

Its important to work on your weaknesses, but I personally try and do that in the offseason so winter and summer for a highschool athlete. when its time to race, I like to be feeling my best as often as possible, for me that means a lot of speed work and not a lot of tempo work. for you it appears to be the opposite. when you're trying to peak for championship season I'd still try and work in some race pace type of sessions, but it'd be focused on the events you run best (for you, the 3200 on the track). I don't think you necessarily need 800 paced reps on top of all the racing high schoolers do if you don't main the 800 as that kind of pace is taxing, especially off of the shorter rest you're describing. a way to get more comfortable and efficient running fast is just add strides. I like to do them as part of my warm up for workouts, or on their own after an easy run. 2-6x70-100m build ups to around 800/1600 pace. take as much rest as you need, and try and focus on good form the whole way. 1-3 days a week of this, and it shouldn't be too taxing but will still help you feel smoother running fast. in the off season I'd definitely recommend doing hills as others have mentioned. Also, if you haven't raced yet, I'd wait to see what happens before changing anything. you might go out there and run something crazy, meaning that this whole time you were just in a tough training block so things were a bit slower. if your races don't line up with where you normally are to start the year, switch things back to how you had them, but add the strides.

To be honest your training plan looks quite solid.
Main thing I think could make a significant difference if you think your speed is lacking (though this doesn’t really relate to kicking speed as that’s more so increasing lactic acid tolerance), is doing a hill sprint session once every week or two in replacement of one of the easy runs (such as the one on Wednesday of week one). Also add strides after easy runs those help a ton.

if you’re overtraining, remove either the long run or workout the day before it as that can be tough on the body.

As a strength runner best thing to primarily work on is your strength, but you also want to make sure you occasionally work on your top end speed (once every other week + strides) or else you’ll start stagnating.

Example: if your top end speed is a 15 second 100, there’s no chance you’ll be able to run close to 2 minutes in the 800 no matter how good your endurance is.