My Journey With Health And Fitness – Working On My Speed

Another day, another Zoom meeting. Here is how these meetings work for me. I close off the doors to the basement which lets everyone in the house know I am in a meeting (there is actually a sign on the family room door that says if this door is closed there is a meeting going on). Because the door is closed one of my cats will start screaming. If I let him in the room he climbs on my desk and blocks my monitor. After he has annoyed me to no end he then goes back to the door and screams to be let out. Now I have done dozens of virtual meetings and this happens every single time. However, he seems satisfied because he has me at his beck and call.

I know I have posted before about my speed or lack thereof. When I was working with my coach she had me doing intervals where I would run at normal speed then sprint for a bit and then repeat that sequence. The problem is I don’t feel I have ever really increased my speed. Since my endurance is definitely coming back I decided maybe it is time to put some serious focus on my speed so that I can get to where I don’t feel like anyone walking quickly can pass me.

Since I am still doing my early morning training in my garage I came up with a plan. Remember, I now have an excellent treadmill which I feel can really help my training. So, this week I have started doing interval training specifically to increase my speed. The concept is simple, I can easily run 5 minute intervals with a minute fast walk in between. Now, each week I am going to slightly increase the speed of the run intervals. By slightly, I really do mean slightly as I would rather take a few months to get to my goal if it means doing it safely.

I gave this theory a try this week and was pleasantly surprised. Now don’t get me wrong, it was still quite the workout but it didn’t kill me. As a matter of fact, by time I got to interval number 8 I knew for sure this was an relatively easy adjustment. The plan going forward is doing this 3 times a week then the following week increasing the speed slightly. If I stay consistent with this (with a break from speed training the 5 weeks I am in Mexico) then by the summer I should be at my goal.

I think the overall challenge is going to be trying to maintain my speed when I am out on a run. However, as the speed gets easier my hope is that I just naturally run at that speed all the time. Here’s hoping it works.