The Need for Speed

Last night we did intervals as our Tuesday night workout. This is how you develop speed. The longer the race you are training for, the longer the distance and the greater the number of repeats you will do. We did 4 one mile repeats, from 72nd street to 90th street, running at "race pace", which is the speed at which we would race a 10K. When we got to 90th street we would do a recovery jog/walk on the bridal path south to about 86th street, then run at "warm up" pace down to the boat house, then jog for 100 yards to 72nd street and race for a mile once again back to 90th.

On my first interval I went faster than I should have, closer to a 6:20 mile than a 6:48 mile (my 10K race pace). On my 2nd one I stopped for 5 or 6 seconds to ask my friend if she was ok, it looked like she was heaving over on the sidelines during her recovery jog between the boathouse and 72nd. She said she was ok and I took off to try and catch my pace group members. I started flying faster than I had ever ran before. I flew by the 12:00 mile group, weaving in and out of people, then the 11:00's, 10:00's, 9:00's, and caught up with the 8:00's and went by them, finally getting pretty close to Pete who was well out in front of everyone else. He had not run the first inteval with us, so was fresher, and he had not stopped for several seconds like I did, but I still wanted to see if I could catch him.

As I passed someone he said "Go Bob!" and I turned and said, "Shhhh!" as I knew I would never catch Pete if he knew I was behind him, because he would just go faster. So my plan was to sneak up behind him and then pass him at the last minute. I made a tactical error at that point. I should have stayed directly behind him but I saw a group of people in the middle of the rec lane and an opening on the left (Pete was on the right). So I thought I might scoot up the left side and pass him, while hopefully the people in the middle would block me from his vision. As I made my move he looked over his left shoulder and I started laughing and put my arms over my face to conceal my identity but he knew what I was up to and he said, "Come on, let's go!" and took off. Of course I couldn't keep up, having tuckered myself out just to get that close, so I finished about 10 seconds behind him. He later wrote us that he had done sub 6:00 miles, so that was probably the fastest mile I ever did, even factoring in the stop at the beginning.

The above image is from a scene in "Top Gun" as almost everybody knows (I recently met somebody who has never seen the movie, which I found surprising). As the Top Gun competition is heating up, Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) say to one another, "I feel the need. The need for speed!" They are a team, Maverick is the pilot and Goose is the "R.I.O.". I'm not exactly sure what the "R.I.O." does; in the movie he is primarily there for comic relief. They go up in the air for that day's simulated dogfight, when they discover to their horror that their head instructor, Viper (Tom Skerritt), is flying against them for the first time. Maverick, in an effort to get in position to "kill" Viper before their competitor Iceman can, pilots his plane through Iceman's jet wash and loses control, causing their plane to crash. Maverick was cleared of responsibility, but it was not his first questionable decision during training. Earlier he pursued Jester below the hard deck, the lower altitude limit imposed upon the pilots during the exercise for their own safety.

There is a bit of Maverick in myself and many of the runners of the team. As marathon runners we tend to be "Type A" personality, competitive types who never shy away from a challenge. Often times I find myself disobeying our coach's instructions and running too fast. In some ways it is understandable, as running faster is the way to increase your overall speediness. But for instance with last night's workout, the point was to do all 4 intervals at the same speed. I ran top speed the first two, then slowed down to a bit below my "race" pace for the third one, and wound up running much slower than that in the 4th interval. So it is questionable whether or not I derived the full benefit from the workout by going off the reservation for the first two repeats, or if I would have been better served by doing what I was told and doing all 4 at the same prescribed pace.

I had another Maverick moment at our 8 mile training run on July 22, half of which was the 4 mile Race for Central Park. We were supposed to run the whole thing at our commute pace (the race plus 4 additonal miles immediately afterwards), in my case 8 minute miles. For various reasons, I wanted to do well in the race and post good numbers on the NYRR results database. The chief reason was that I had done relatively poorly at the NYC Triathlon the previous week, only beating 21% of the field, so I wanted to go out there and put up an impressive time. I raced the 4 miles at a 6:40 pace, finishing 124th out of 3,847 people, beating 96.78% of the field. So I felt good about that showing, but was kind of unhappy with myself for deviating from the training program. After I finished the race I waited a few minutes for the rest of the 8 minute milers to finish and then stuck with them for the second loop.

The problem with going too fast is most glaring on marathon day, where it is imperative to exercise discipline in the early stages of the race. You do need to keep those competitive juices in check, especially when you get off the Verrazano Bridge and the great crowds of Brooklyn start cheering you. Running fast creates lactic acid much more quickly than running not quite as fast does, so the fatigue in your legs builds up rapidly and ruins you for the latter half of the race if you are not careful. It is better to do your racing at the end of the race, because when the race ends, it doesn't matter how tired your legs are. Running fast for the first half of the race is just going to make the second half of the marathon pure torture.