March: Morals

   After their fabled race, the tortoise should have invited the hare out for a beer. The hare's secrets for speed would benefit any running program, even if speed is beside the point. The moral to their tale is actually the opposite of what most of us learned in childhood: endurance training, rather than sprints, invites complacency.

   Speed work bestows efficiency on your workouts, building strength and improving your body's oxygen uptake with fewer miles of effort. It helps you maintain your pace and form during the last 20 percent of a long run, whether it's a race or workout. It sheds new light on your shortcomings as a runner. And it shakes a training program out of tedium, trading plodding routine for bursts of exhilaration.

   The question for distance runners is how to get the most from speed work, especially if you hate it. By the way, it's okay to hate it, at least initially. In fact, the best way to introduce it into your workouts is by coyly playing with it: on your next customary long run, put on a sustained surge that's only moderately faster than your normal pace. Hold this quicker tempo just until you begin to feel winded, which tells you that you've switched into an anaerobic burn. Now slow down until you recover. Repeat. This is your basic interval - no need for stopwatches, coaches, or programmatic workouts. When you're new to intervals, the number you add to your workouts is more important than the speed at which you run them. By the way, give yourself at least one day of rest or cross training between these workouts.

   You'll see results within weeks. And if you're like most runners, you'll also find new gratification in your training. Intervals are touchstones for change; almost miraculously, a better runner emerges, exuding new confidence and agility. Once you're hooked on the benefits of speed work, you'll want to direct your efforts toward specific goals. So bring on the stopwatches and checklists. The Internet teems with workouts and advice. Don't expect to find much consensus about how to get the most from intervals, however. Running coaches prescribe tailored workouts with the solemn faith of witch doctors. Controversy has swirled around the subject since the end of World War II. The best we know from sports physiology is that "maximal" intervals - very fast repeats, of two to ten minutes each - yield the best results for most endurance athletes.

   As the hare understood, speed is a seductive path to the finish line, which is why it invites hubris. You should begin interval training with the recognition that the benefits eventually peak and that if you keep pushing to squeeze out ever more performance, you risk disappointment or injury. Likewise, your body requires far more rest between interval workouts than it needs for your weekly long run. A little-known secret is that the hare's dillydallying between sprints wasn't because of arrogance. It was because his legs were tired.