The word of the day is: PICKUPS! You will see these in your training plans occasionally.
Q. what exactly are pickups?
A. Pickups are short bursts of speed that are no faster than 5k pace and no longer than 20 seconds in duration. We "pick up" the pace then go right back to what we were doing before.
Q. Why do we do them?
A. Pickups serve the same purpose as HIIT training to make your cardiovascular system more efficient by shaking your heart out of its comfort zone. Unlike HIIT training we don't wear your muscles out completely.
Q. Why 5k pace?
A. We want to keep these controlled, remembering 'faster' isn't necessarily better. We want to avoid treating these like sprints! 5k pace is the fastest I will ask my runners to go, fast but still in control. A rough estimate is no more than 3 minutes per mile faster than your 140 pace.
Q. OMG what does that mean????
A. Jog to warm up for ten minutes without your heart rate going over 140. Consider this speed your baseline pace for the duration of the workout. Let's say you are roughly 12 minute miles for the warm up, your pickups will be NO FASTER THAN 9:00 per mile. Hold for 20 seconds, then return to your 12:00 pace/easy effort. When your heart rate drops back to 140 at baseline pace, start your next pickup whenever you are ready. You should NOT need to walk after a pickup at this point; if you need to walk to catch your breath then the pickup was too fast.
DON'T GET COMPETITIVE, YOU WILL MISS THE POINT. DO NOT NOT NOT COUNT PICKUPS!!!!
I prescribe pickups as a precursor to fartleks, a very popular and effective speed development workout. Pickups are technically not speed development, this is CV (cardiovascular) efficiency....but efficiency absolutely leads to speed so don't disregard it!
Cheers,
Coach Fleming
Coach MK Fleming is the founder of Fitness Protection, LLC where she coaches all kinds of runners for $29 per month and gives marathon plans away for free. Click here to download her most popular training plan, Tenacious AF!