Body says "Run faster" Brain says "Whoa - not now" - confusion reigns

Go faster. See what happens.

Why is everyone so afraid of "failing" a training run? It's practice. You are SUPPOSED to fail in practice. Screwing up in training means you are less likely to screw up when it counts in a race. Because you've already been there and know what to expect.

What is the absolute worst thing that could happen? You get injured and have to take some time off. Well, guess what? You have now learned that you shouldn't be doing what you were doing, and you will be better for it. I have learned far more from all the times I've blown up on a run, or gotten an injury, than I ever did in all the training where nothing happened.

Just run, baby. It ain't any harder than that.

ETA: This is why I monitor effort, not speed. If you are going "faster", who cares, as long as it's still easy, or hard, or whatever the run is supposed to be that day.

Edited by Scout7 2011-01-04 7:18 AM

The best workout is not the hardest workout.  The best workout is the easiest workout that brings about the desired adaptations.

You should almost always be physically capable of exceeding the paces in your training runs. You should rarely do so.

The longer the distance... the more mentally challenging I find it. Why? Because I have to HOLD BACK. I keep a check on my Garmin and when I see I am running too fast... I have to slow down. That's the hardest part of doing longer distances, in my opinion. It's take a lot of patience to keep it slow when you want to go fast (knowing you can't keep that pace for the whole distance and you will break down at the end).

How & when have you determined how fast you should be running?

If you tested and set either HR or pace zones, and have been using one of those it could be your fitness has improved and you should retest.

Sometimes I do sometimes I don't.  Depends on what is on tap for the next day.  If my legs are saying 'go hard' and doing so isn't going to wreck a key workout tomorrow, then yes, I go ahead and go hard.  But if I've got, say, a long hard run planned tomorrow, then I save it and go easy even if my legs are telling me that they are ready to go hard.

I'm with Scout -- if I've decided to go ahead and go hard, the last thing I worry about is failing, nor does the fear of failing play a role in my decision.  In fact, failing is very instructive.  I've gone out too hard in a long run before and had to back off at the end.  I learn a lot more from those runs than I do from the ones where everything goes as expected.

x2

As Scout said, if you run by effort, then there is nothing to talk about.

I would consider adding a weekly speed work session, if you aren't doing one already.  If you are less than 6 weeks out from your race I would wait until after...  I would also start with minimal total distance.  I recommend the book "Daniels Running Formula" by Jack Daniels.  I had to read it 3 times before it really sank in but it changed the way I train forever.