While I love my running training schedule–alternating hard/short and easy/long days–and I’ve expanded it to be a similar schedule for my cycling, there’s no question that I don’t get faster unless I do intervals and hard efforts. And hard efforts mean pain.

It’s not fun, but it does help.

My endurance has always been my strong suit as far as events go. Which is how to finish centuries and limp through marathons. I don’t give up. But I’m not fast, and I never have been.

While I’ll never be a speed demon, it’s clear that if I want to be faster, I’m going to have to work at it. While I love the length of 50 mile rides and 10 mile runs, what’s going to count soon is the 3 mile run with speedwork and the 15 mile ride with intervals.

It’s going to hurt, but it’ll be the hurt I need to improve.
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