I'm a high school runner, by no means a superstar but I've qualified for my District meet in a few weeks and I'd like to make it to Regionals which requires a Top 6 finish at Districts.
I am by no means an expert on the mechanics of running and all the body systems incorporated, but over the past few months I've been reading several running books to educate myself on how to train harder, smarter and stay injury-free.
Over the past 3 weeks or so, I've noticed some things in my training and I was wondering if anyone could give me recommendations on how to correct these issues or train to strengthen them.
First, relative to my overall abilities and the rest of my teams, I feel that I have pretty decent speed.
The week before last we did the following workout:
20x200s with 30 seconds rest between each 200, and a minute after 10. The focus was to drop the time by 1-2 seconds per 200. I managed to go 42, 41, 40, 39, 38, 36, 35, 34, 33, 30 for the first set and on the second set, 40, 41, 40, 39, 37, 35, 34, 33, 32, 27. To me this indicated that I can start at a slightly faster pace, perhaps 40 seconds and descending from there. It also leads me to believe that I have strong overall speed if I can knock out a 27 in trainers after a workout, and I felt strong.
Earlier that week we did a 7.xx mile run on roundabout 7 minute miles. One of my questions is, what does this indicate? Do I have strong endurance, or weak endurance? It felt like a good, hard pace, but I was able to maintain it for a while.
Two days ago we did a ladder workout. 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 1200, 800, 400. Paces were supposed to be: 74, 2:43, 4:10 and 5:35. I ran 74, 2:36, 4:04 -- I skipped the mile due to shin pain -- 4:08, 2:36 and 68. However this time I felt much more strained to run. To me this meant that I have good top speed and good endurance, but a weak lactate threshold (assuming that I understand the concept correctly). I feel that I am weak/inneficient when trying to maintain top speed for long periods of time.
To give a reference of race times that may indicate otherwise this season I've run 2:19 for the 800, 5:07 for the 1600, 11:08 for the 3200 and 18:33 for the 5000.
I apologize that this post was lengthy but I was trying to give a thorough background. If more information is needed, feel free to ask. My overall questions are: What are my strengths? What are my weakness? Eg. Speed, Endurance, etc. Are there any drills, exercises or workouts I can run to improve my weak links? Based off of said workouts and performances, am I about where I should be or does one indicate that the other should be faster? Thanks in advance for any help provided.