HOW MUCH speed is too much? Is it detrimental to run at least one speed workout at the track per week all year long? Does it open one to a lot more injuries? Does it undermine peaking for an important race at a specific time of the year simply because you’re doing speed all year long?

—Roger Valle
via e-mail

I AM reminded of one recent season when Suzy Hamilton ran a good race early on in her season and Track & Field News wrote that some people thought she was too fast too soon. Her coach explained that he felt it important to maintain some degree of speed all year-round and that speed work wasn’t something you could put on the shelf for a prolonged period of time.

Then there was Dr. Rosa, coach of many Kenyans, who said to a reporter that Paul Tergat can run hard five to seven days a week and only get stronger. My personal take is that Paul Tergat isn’t human and that you should be doing something fast at least once a week all year long. The more you can handle without getting injured, the better off you’ll be. Listening to your body and knowing when to back off from it is important.

Sometimes you’ll want to take a break whether you feel you need it or not, just as a preventive measure. It will make it easier for you to do better speed work as the race you’re peaking for approaches and shouldn’t prevent or undermine your effort to peak for a specific time unless it detracts significantly from your overall mileage.

That being said, I haven’t done any speed work since my last race—a half-marathon I ran 10 days before writing this. I really should get out there and do some fartlek, but I feel pretty beat up from it.

Joe LeMay
has consistently been one of America’s premier road racers over the past decade; he served as this magazine’s featured “On the Road” columnist for the past year and a half.

I THINK the workout is fine, assuming that it’s a satisfying part of the marathoner’s program. I infer that it fulfills his need for a speed injection and has already worked within the encompassing off-track training. If I understand the question, it appears that the concern is whether an undeviating continuation of this weekly routine might adversely affect certain marathon racing. If such a concern exists, why not simply bend according to the apparent desirabilities of readying for upcoming marathons?

One doesn’t have to do the same thing on the same day, 52 weeks a year, does one? So I guess I’m saying something like, if it works, don’t change it; but don’t be a fetishist to routine.

John J. Kelley
won the Boston Marathon in 1957; he also won the tough Yonkers Marathon eight years in a row: 1956-63.

THE EXPRESSION that “everything’s relative” seems to apply here. By that I mean that speed work done religiously once a week all year long doesn’t necessarily have to be gut-busting speed work each of those 52 weeks. In fact, none of it should be gut-busting. I think many marathoners avoid the track like the plague because they have the mistaken idea that to do a track speed workout you’ve got to race around the track as fast as you can and then look for a garbage can into which you can puke.

Speed workouts at the track can be done at a sane pace—that is, a little faster than your race pace so that the speed workout serves as a reminder to your legs that they can turn over faster if needed. Doing one track workout per week is a good way to keep the speed in your legs. If you lay off speed work for an extended time, when you come back to it, you’ll have an enormous amount of inertia to overcome, and you might be more prone to injury by once a week moving your legs fast at a track. If my fading memory serves me correctly, I believe Frank Shorter does two track workouts per week throughout the year.

During your off-season, cut back a bit on the speed you’re requiring of yourself, but continue to do a weekly session. If nothing else, a weekly session at the track (whether it is repeat miles or 400-meter repeats or a pyramid workout) keeps your running form smooth and gives you a good sense of pacing, so you are guaranteed that the mile you just covered in 7:30 is actually a mile and not nine-tenths of a mile like the first “mile” on your favorite local road course.

You would probably be more liable to get injured at the track by being tripped by one of the dogs running loose than by turning your legs over faster than usual once a week.

Rich Benyo
is editor of this magazine and coauthor (along with Joe Henderson) of Running Encyclopedia.

A REALLY fast German friend of mine had trouble pronouncing the letter “r” when speaking English but he never had trouble dominating the field when it came to racing. When I was preparing for the Dolphin South End 12-Hour on the Golden Gate park track I asked him for training advice and he said “If you are going to lace on the tlack, you need to tlain on the tlack.”

Speed work is an important part of every running regimen that doesn’t necessarily need to be done on a track. I often like to train on the terrain of my upcoming races and run either sprints from point to point or shorter distances at a higher heart rate. If my upcoming race is a road race or trail run, I then feel comfortable knowing what pace I have done on similar terrain.

Another alternative to speed training on the track is to run with someone faster. I have a friend whom I try to run with twice a month who really pushes me on my long regular runs. I can do this only twice a month because his natural speed makes me dig deep into my reserves to find mine.

Regarding injuries and peaking before race day, I try to practice what a lot of my older ultrarunning heroes already know, the art of listening. If my body feels too worn down and the running doesn’t feel right, I try to give it some rest before pushing it again. Missing a speed workout from time to time will be much better for racing performance than trying to do speed training when you are not feeling 100 percent. It means that you don’t have a strong enough base and you need to evaluate your training and racing program.

Michael Wille
took third place in the fall Lake Tahoe Ultra while preparing for the 2002 Marathon des Sables.

IF ONE races every weekend, yes, weekly speed work on the track would be too much! But then it depends how far one goes; if one runs only one mile of speed work per session one could handle this distance twice a week and even more, with no deleterious effects.

Racing twice a month one can handle the weekly speed work. However, if one is running at 5K pace or faster during the speed sessions, I wouldn’t advise more than three miles of speed work at any one time. Never run all circuits in the same direction; go the other way every two laps to even the stress. This kind of regimen will keep a person sharp and pretty much injury free. The number of miles logged, running weekly, must be taken into account. If one is running more than 70 miles a week one cannot benefit from lots of speed work.

Contain any penchant to overtrain. My example, 2001: I had six world records, at 5K, 3,000 meters, the mile, 10,000 meters on the track and on the road, and the marathon. In the age group 75-79 10,000 on the track I ran 41:59:00, a 6:46 pace, and in the 10K on the road I ran 41:12, a 6:39 pace. This I did off two days of walking six miles, the third day of running 13 to 16 miles at 8:30 pace with three miles at 7:20 after seven miles of warming up, and then finishing the run at the 8:30 pace. Repeating this cycle over and over, I did not suffer any running injuries, logged 2,012 miles, of which 40 percent was walking, and I stayed healthy and racing fit all year long.

John Keston
set age-group records for 77 year olds in the 5,000 and 10,000 in 2001.