Pyramid Workout

After reading some of Jeff Galloway's book "Marathon: You Can Do It," I've been reevaluating my pacing decisions in my training runs. I don't run particularly fast in the first place, but the range over which I train is relatively narrow. One of the reasons I may have such difficulty building up to long runs is that I tend toward a running pace more suited for 5K to 10K, and I burn out too quickly. Long distance running is about aerobic endurance and not speed, yet I lean toward speed and lactate threshold type of training runs, not knowing how to slow myself down.

It's an ego thing. I don't consider "jogging" or shuffling to be running, and I don't want others to see me toddling along like a housewife or a weekend jogger. Yet that's precisely what it sounds like Galloway is encouraging when training to build mileage. Even my long 12-miler last week was at a marathon-ish pace of 8:40, which I thought was slow enough but respectable. Turns out that's about a minute or more too fast. I should be targeting something closer to 9:00.

To help myself get a feel for these various pacing goals, I mapped out a treadmill profile that I want to try next chance I get. I've got in on a sheet of paper here, but I tend to lose these notes, so I'm going to post it here for personal reference.

Segment	MPH	Type	Pace	Target HR%	Target HR	Miles	Cum.
0:00 - 5:00	6.0	Recovery	10:00	65%	115	0.50	0.50
5:00 - 10:00	6.5	LSD	9:15	70%	125	0.54	1.04
10:00 - 15:00	6.7	Marathon	9:00	75%	132	0.56	1.60
15:00 - 20:00	7.1	Half Marathon	8:30	80%	140	0.59	2.19
20:00 - 25:00	7.4	Tempo	8:00	85%	148	0.62	2.81
25:00 - 30:00	7.7	10K (49:00)	7:50	90%	157	0.64	3.45
30:00 - 31:00	8.3	5K (22:30)	7:14	tbd	tbd	0.14	2.59
31:00 - 33:00	9.0	Mile-and-a-Half	6:40	tbd	tbd	0.30	3.89
33:00 - 34:00	8.3	5K	7:14	tbd	tbd	0.14	4.03
34:00 - 35:00	7.7	10K	7:50	tbd	tbd	0.13	4.16
35:00 - 40:00	7.4	Tempo	8:00	tbd	tbd	0.62	4.78
40:00 - 45:00	7.1	Half Marathon	8:30	tbd	tbd	0.59	5.37
45:00 - 50:00	6.7	Marathon	9:00	tbd	tbd	0.56	5.93
50:00 - 55:00	6.5	LSD	9:15	tbd	tbd	0.54	6.47
55:00 - 60:00	6.0	Recovery	10:00	tbd	tbd	0.50	6.97

I left the heart rate fields "tbd" at the peak and on the recovery side of the "pyramid" because I just don't know what I should expect, other than my heart rate ought to be higher on the recovery side than it was on the build up for each of the pace levels. I have to try it out to see what the results are.

This doesn't look like a tough workout and it may fill the bill more as a "maintenance" run, but it's more to educate myself on what the various paces feel like and see if I'm making an accurate correlation between pace and perceived exertion level.