Jeff Galloway recently came into the Maine Running Company for a short clinic and to share some of his experiences. This is a continuation of my write-up on the event based on the notes that I took. All of the articles will be linked to down at the end of the article as they appear on the website.

Today’s article deals with Jeff’s notions on building speed.

Running Faster

“There are no health benefits for running faster. It’s only for the ego.”

If you want to run faster, then you need to do some sort of speed work. Jeff allows for a leap of faith pace projection for goal times to train for in a race by cutting 30 seconds off of pace dictated by the Magic Mile pace time.

Jeff has 3 types of faster running in his workouts.

First, he has his runners do acceleration gliders as part of their normal workouts. These promote leg turnover and help you get your momentum going. They aren’t speed work, they are just drills, so they should be very short and should not leave you at all fatigued.

Second, for marathon training, he likes to add mile repetitions at the leap of faith goal pace. Note that this is the pace that is about 30 seconds faster than the pace dictated by the Magic Mile, not what you hope to be able to bring your pace down to over the span of the next few months to a year. He recommends running for 3 minutes and walking for 30 seconds until you have finished running the mile repeat, and then walking for 5 minutes before the next repeat.

Jeff recommends that you do your mile repetitions on the opposite weekends from your long run. You may work up to as many as 14 mile repeats, if your long run is up to 28 or 29 miles. Otherwise, you should do half of the number of mile repeats as you do in your long run. Again, note that these are not all out miles, they are based on your projected race time.

Third, Jeff likes to do race rehearsal runs. For a marathon, he will have his runners do a 3 mile run at marathon goal pace so that they can get used to running (or run-walk-running) continually at the pace that they expect to race at.

For races shorter than the marathon, Jeff suggests that you do 400 meter repeats. For the 5k, you should do 12 to 15 repeats, and for the 10k you should work up to 15 to 22 repeats. Your pace should be 8 seconds faster than your quarter mile race pace, or about 40 seconds faster than your mile race pace. For example, if your Magic Mile was 10 minutes, then your 5k race pace would be 10:33/mile, which means that your 400 meter race pace in your 5k would be 2:38. Take 8 seconds off of that, and you should run your 400 meter repeats in your workout in 2:30.

The long run builds endurance, but speed work builds the ability to run at a hard pace.

(Event Photos)