Just a girl's summer training: insight needed

1) Are you running in HS, College, something else?

2) Are you trying to peak for XC or will you run track as well?

Regardless, it is more important to increase mi/week than get your pace down, at least through the first half or so of the summer. Even if you stay at 8:20/mi, running for a couple of months with a focus on getting from 40mpw to like 60 will be a bigger factor than running 40mpw at 7:45 pace. Improvements in speed can come into workouts at the end of summer and during the XC season when you body can't handle the high mileage but will have good enough base to deal with the intensity of more speed work

Primarily, I'll be running for myself.

Well, I will be on the B team at my school, a T&F powerhouse.

I'm not sure what my actual plans for competing are. That's up to my coach.

I basically don't want to look like a fool. I know at the end of the summer I will have drastically improved, and I know there are much slower people on it as well, it's just a matter of my inferiority complex kicking in.

I was used to being a very competitive swimmer, but I'm mentally solid and pretty driven so I'm hoping I can pick up on this. I just want to use every available resource to help myself.

Totally agree with the previous poster - the important thing is to slowly increase the mileage. Per Dr Daniels a 22 min 5K runner should do easy runs at approx 9 mins per mile, so don't worry about running any faster than your 8:20. I am coaching a 20 min 5K woman and I make sure that her easy runs are between 8 and 9 mins per mile so that she can hit her goal paces in sessions. Build your base then bring on the speedwork.

I understand, I'm reading Daniel's book right now. I know exactly which table you got that value out of...

I just feel like I'm so much better/it's so much easier to run 8:30 miles for 9 miles than to drop to a pace faster than 8. Hopefully just putting in higher mileage weeks will increase my threshold?

The truth is 3-40 miles/week is not much. If you run 8:20 pace for 6 weeks of 60 miles week, a guarantee you, everything will get easier from there.

BTW when I was in HS, I ran a 16:30 5k off of lots of 8 min miles and some workouts.

So if I was young like you I'd be running as many miles as possible, 40, 50, 60 mpw as mentioned at a comfortable pace. Throw in some faster efforts when the mood strikes. And don;t be afraid to take a day off and head to the beach when your body is dog-tired. Long runs as often as possible, 10, 12, 15 miles. Run at whatever pace you like in order to get the miles in. By the end of the summer your easy pace will be faster anyway.

Agreed, I just don't have the time to run any more right now. It's right before finals. I'm taking 18 credits, working and studying for the GRE. Excuses excuses.

I plan on running around 60 as soon as I have the time, which should be any time after May 1st.

I'd say for a non-runner 40 is decent.

Another thing: my arm swing. Being an ex-swimmer, I find my shoulders always tensed up during faster paced runs.

What can I do to improve this?

Concentrate on where you carry your arms until keeping your shoulders relaxed comes naturally. Don't keep your hands balled up near your chin, swinging from your shoulder blades to the front of your rib cage. Drop your shoulders and let your fists swing past your hips.

I'm proud that my Letsrun younger brethren have become more sensititive and enlightened. This thread has been up for hours, and no one yet has asked for pictures!

summer running wrote:

Another thing: my arm swing. Being an ex-swimmer, I find my shoulders always tensed up during faster paced runs.

What can I do to improve this?

My favourite way of getting round this is the following:

pull your shoulders as high as you can so they feel as if they are around your ears.

Throw your shoulders down as hard as you can. Th position they fall into is the position they should be in when you run. Any higher and you are tightening your chest and restricting your breathing.

You can reinforce this by doing that exercise before your easy runs and thinking about your shoulders during the run. Gradually your body will adopt the shoulder posture automatically more and more. If it comes under pressure in faster sessions ask someone to shout "shoulders" at you when they get too high. It works.

What sort of 5km time are you hoping to do by the end of the summer?

Oops, just noticed an extra syllable in "sensitive."

When I run at 8:30 pace, I'm fine with my shoulders and everything seems natural. It's when I do anything shorter and quicker, they get tensed up. I've never been one to ball up my fists. I'm just banking on increasing my mileage and hoping my arm swing will fall into place.

I'd be happy if I could run anywhere from 21-20min ...I have only run a single 5k, and it was in horrendous wind (30mph w/ 40 gusts) so I do not know what my real potential is, because I don't even know what I'm capable of at the moment.

summer running wrote:

When I run at 8:30 pace, I'm fine with my shoulders and everything seems natural. It's when I do anything shorter and quicker, they get tensed up.

Bear in mind that one way to breathe is by lifting the shoulders, using the sternocleidomastoideus muscles. This opens the upper part of the lungs. (You'll see a lot of runners--even very good ones--do this at the end of a race.) So you're probably not just randomly raising the shoulders; you're doing it so you can breathe at faster speeds.

Two things:

1) As you get fitter, your ability to process oxygen at faster speeds will improve, so there will be less impulse to raise the shoulders for breathing purposes.

2) You should work on learning to breathe by using your diaphragm--abdominal, not chest, breathing. You'll actually get more oxygen in this way. If your coach can't work with you on this, try the chorus or music teacher.

summer running wrote:

Hey all,

Just curious about this.

I plan to spend all summer working, running, and sleeping.

Assuming that I run an average of 8:20 per mile now for 30-40 miles per week (planning to increase the pace) and around a 22 5k, what do you think I'm capable of, and what are some suggestions to help me along?

I'm a swimmer converted to running, and hopefully this summer will be the turning point in my transition.

Anything's helpful, thanks.

Whatever you do, don't take any advice from a guy on LetsRun offering free coaching, his name is Michael Matthews.

I do agree with many of the posters who say that increasing mileage is important . But in my 10 years of running in middle school, high school, and college there is one thing that I found out was true for me and that is you need to run fast to run fast. It sounds silly but I think that it is an important idea to keep in mind. If you want to run 6:40 pace in a race you need to run some mileage at 6:25 pace (just an example). So I wouldn't be afraid to drop the pace of SOME of your runs. During your long and easy runs the total run time should be your only concern, not pace.

One bread and butter workout that always helped me was 6-10x800m at 10-20 secs below race pace (per mile) with a 30 second rest. The important thing to remember in this workout is to hit the pace if you find yourself falling off take a little longer break than usual and try again or just stop. Because if you can't finish them properly then you've probably gotten all you can out of the workout. Also remember that this workout is all in the rest so it is critical that you keep it short. You can adjust the pace depending on how you are feeling.

I would do this workout every other week mixed in with a fartlek workout of some longer reps over the summer. This should help your endurance and the speed that you are going to inject over the season. This way the speed won't seem so foreign to you when you get to that point in the season. A good fartlek for beginning runners that I used to like was Telephone Poles. Of course if you don't have telephone poles where you live this could be a problem but the premise of this workout it that you run say 8 telephone pole spans hard then 3-4 easy and so on for 4-5 miles. You can adjust this based upon your fitness level. You can do this with minutes as well but I think that the telephone pole thing spruces the workout up a bit. The goal here is to run at a harder effort than your normal run pace but for longer than the 800m reps I suggested earlier.

Of course you are just beginning so remember what I have suggested is only true after you have been running for at least a little while. Don't go and get yourself hurt. Good luck. And remember what worked for me may not work for you its just a suggestion.