My Garmin Forerunner was £100, much cheaper than a treadmill or gym membership!
I agree that increasing pace over shorter distances is the way to go to increase pace over longer races. I'm currently working on 5k pace, with a long term goal of faster 10k and HM.
The first three posts of this thread are useful (Moraghan is a qualified coach and UK 1500m runner in his age category)
www.runnersworld.co.uk/.../166480.html
Yes - good point about using a Garmin for intervals CB - I have actually got a Garmin 305 Forerunner. Gyms and treadmills are not for everyone. Thanks for the link.
I too am a post marathoner hoping to improve on speed! Have come across this
www.arc2arch.co.uk/.../join-the-arc2arch-team-and-improve-your-5k-time
by a guy who in 2011 ran a marathon EVERY week to raise money for a mental health charity in memory of his father who commit suicide. He is a fast runner so am hoping for good things!
As well as speed am hoping to establish a better/more regular running routine, getting there slowly! I agree it seems impossible the idea of running at speed for long distance, but its something I also crave! I feel great when doing some fast sprints etc just sustainng it is the problem, and avoiding injury! Heres to intervals and fartlek! : D
Iv just found it really amazing that just putting in two speed training sessions a week has made such a big difference to my pace, speed on my 5k's.
Im just finding its easy to run at a faster pace for my first ten mins and hopefully this will make a difference in my next event.
Also reading up on here about stride and so on has been of good use. Im 5,4 and I think Iv possibly shortened my stride whilst doing the speed training and its just brilliant. Cheers Runny bug people!
As has been mentioned, intervals are a great way of avoiding 'one-paced' training. To get the most from speed sessions you should vary the type of intervals you run and not just do the same session each week.
Obviously shorter intervals are better for 5/10k runners, while longer intervals are more relevant to half- and marathon runners. Even so, I still do sessions that vary from 400m up to 1 mile, so that I'm training over a whole range of different speeds. I've been taking a 3-minute rest between intervals, but I'm pretty sure 2 mins would have been enough for a decent recovery when I did 1/4-mile intervals last week. Will still use 3 mins for 800 m and up.
Normal advice is for no more than one speed session per week, so don't forget tempo runs, which will exercise you in a slightly different way again, if you want another quality session in the weekly training programme.
Oh, one other thing that might be worth mentioning - I read it a few years ago in an article on intervals for sprint speed. In a training session you should stop if your speed starts to drop after a few intervals; if you carry on with the planned number of reps when you're slowing down you're just training to run slow.