10-20-30

After the fun of the Blue Line run last weekend, I’ve been kind of bored with my running routine. This week I decided to shake things up by reversing my route and trying a new interval technique I read about in Running Times.

It’s called 10-20-30, and it’s supposed to be a way to keep your workouts fresh while throwing in some speed once in a while. Now, the author of the article did not claim that this technique would make me faster; it is supposedly something doctors devised to keep patients from dropping their workouts out of boredom or because working out is too difficult for them. I thought, “What the hell,” since I was already pretty bored. How much worse could it get?

You start with a warm up, of course; one mile will do. Then, you run at an easy pace for thirty seconds, a medium pace for twenty seconds, and a hard pace for ten seconds. I can’t count seconds because I’m too busy counting breaths, so I modified my counting to breath sets of three in and two out. This way, I did thirty breath sets at an easy pace, twenty sets at a medium pace, and ten sets balls to the wall.

I think this “game” might be the answer to my aversion to tempo runs. I’ve only played with it for four miles, but each time I felt that I could go on much longer. I might even throw this in during the Akron Half Marathon if I feel like I’m about to slow down too much.

Want to read about my run this weekend? Want to know what I did after the run? Click here to read the full post.

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