Running slower than 7:30/mile feels terrible to me. I think there is more pounding as I'm used to running smoothly at a faster pace.

Sweston,

Perhaps you can shorten the long warm-up & cool down at >9.20 pace and spend more time at the 8:30-9:00 pace.

For my long runs, I do what I call "Progressive Easy". Eventhough, the intensity is easy-to-moderate, but I incorporate gradual & linear increase in pace during the run.

For example: (based on my 10K time of 39:xx and Jack Daniel's E-pace of 8:07 min/mile.

1 mile @ 8:35, 3 miles @ 8:26, 3 miles @ 8:19, 3 miles @ 8:10, 3 miles @ 8:02, 2 miles @ 7:45

Total 15 miles @ ~8:10 min/mile average pace.

I like this type of multi-pace training run because I feel it trains my body at various levels of endurance/fat burning zones.

If I want to do a real "Progression Run", I'll just shorten the distance at fat burning zones and replace those miles with faster running (typically @ MP or LT pace). Hope this helps.

The hardest run I ever did was an 18 miler at a pace much slower than my normal pace. I was doing 18-20 mile runs at that time every weekend with no problem at all, but I ran that one with a friend at his pace and it took several days for my legs to stop feeling beat up. Easy recovery days are a very important part of training, but that taught me that running much slower than your normal pace can be as hard or harder on your body as anything.

Utterly: I do exactly what you do on long runs, although my slow first mile(s) is/are slower and, if I'm feeling good, I finish faster. But it's quite common for me to run a 15 miler with the first mile or two at 8:45 - 9:00 and each successive mile slightly faster. I seem to have notch points, and they vary from day to day. Sometimes I'll warm into a stabilized pace of around 8:20s. Sometimes, by mile 6 or 7, I'm down around 8:00s. Several weeks ago, I paused for two minutes at my turnaround (7.5 miles), and when I started off, I was suddenly running 7:30s. If I'm having a really good day, I manage to stabilize at a high-end aerobic pace of 7:15 - 7:20, which is somewhere between marathon pace and half-marathon pace. The operative word for me, always, is "stabilized." On a long run, especially, it's important not to strain--although it's equally important, I've found, to push at what SEEM like one's aerobic boundaries and see if there aren't another gear or two hiding just beyond the obvious comfort-zone notch point. Sometimes--and often unexpectedly--a new and faster but no more effortful training pace appears.

Other days, even when you feel pretty good at first, nothing very fast shows up; if you strain and push, hoping it will, you just end up straining.

Pfitzinger says that runners with my imputed marathon pace (7:30) should begin long runs at 9:00 pace and end up running 8:15s by the end. Basically this works for me, but, as I've just described, if I'm willing to push gently at what seems like a good solid aerobic pace, sometimes a significantly faster aerobic pace materializes.

And sometimes when it materializes, it works for a while and then you suddenly need to slow back.

Weston: You're definitely heading into interesting territory (the phenomenology of running) with your thread-starting question. You mention, though, that when you speed up your stride rate speeds up. That's probably not optimal. Although we all have some small variation in stride rate--i.e., most of us probably stride slightly slower for the first 400-800 of our runs, and perhaps slow towards the very end if we ease back from hard running into an easy/recovery phase--it's also surely the case that it's better to increase speed by increasing stride length, rather than stride rate. I've trained myself to keep a decent stride rate (83-85 footstrikes per foot per minute; a stride rate of 166-170) no matter how slowly I'm running, and I know I've benefitted from it. I've tried to increase stride rate to 180, as per Daniels, but that never feels right to me, no matter how much I try. But 170 does feel right, at all speeds, and it's an improvement over the way I used to lag.

http://This message has been edited by KudzuRunner (edited Nov-17-2005).

Great questions.

Well, since sprinters have stride rates considerably in excess of the 180-200 footstrikes/minute that Jack Daniels has named, after extensive study, as the stride rate of Olympic 5000/10000 finalists, it stands to reason that in the "kick" portion of any race--road or track--the stride rate should go up. It's understood that you're pouring it all on, so to speak. For "race pace," broadly conceived, though--whatever pace you run most of the race in; the portion between the opening burst and jockeying for position (on the front end) and the final kick (on the back end)--it also makes sense to find a stabilized, sustainable stride rate that works smoothly in concert with your lengthened race-pace stride length.

One thing that does seem to be true is that almost every can benefit from experimenting with stride rate, particularly with speeding up stride rate. I have relatively short, heavily muscled legs--a soccer player's legs, not a distance runner's legs--and I've always felt that I worked best with a slightly longer, slightly slower stride than runners with slimmer legs. 20 years ago my 5K race pace was 5:35; now it's a minute slower than that. Still, at a stride rate of 170 I feel as though I'm really cranking.

Yet when I watched a recent 5 K on video, I thought: ****, you've lost your leg speed. I think all runners, including me, would benefit from experimenting with much higher turnover for relative short bursts--strides, in a word, but with the focus not just on speed but specifically on turnover. Think Michael JOhnson.

Yes, you're digging deeply into the mysteries!