I have been wondering about this. Is it more beneficial to train your strong points than to try to overcome your weak points?
For example, I have two strong points: very good aerobic condition and extremely even pacing. However, my raw speed is absolutely atrocious and hills destroy my legs. Now, I believe that if I focus most of my work on improving my aerobic talent that I'll be able to more reach my potential then if I focused on speed work. My reasoning is that with a lot of focus on speed work, my aerobic ability will suffer a bit because I can't train it as often or as intensley. Now I don't think I should just ignore speed work, train it, but don't make it a huge focus of my training.
I have already noticed that this seems to work because nearly every season (XC or track), I seem to start out strong and improve fairly quickly while we focus mostly on longer stuff like long intervals, tempo runs, and pure mileage. However, once we start adding in a lot of speed work, my times start to get slower, especially when we begin to peak. I feel I'd be better off just continuing the longer intervals and tempo work with a little speed thrown in until the end of the season and also keep the mileage pretty constant. Just make sure I'm fresh and ready to go for the goal race, even though when I train through a race I'm usually just fine (UNLESS we do a hard speed workout 2 days before the meet, then my legs are always toast).
Does any of this make sense or am I an idiot?