by Barry Anderson Ujena Fit Club Coach This is a racing technique that may not help your time but can help you defeat that rival who seems to constantly beat you to the finish line. Though blind turns are more often seen in cross-country courses, many road races do have turns where someone that is 10-20 yards or more behind you will loose sight of you as you make the turn ahead of them.

The idea here is to surge or accelerate for a short distance as the runner(s) behind lose sight of you in the turn. By the time those behind you make it through the blind turn and see you again, your lead will have increased by more than they have expected. This can be deflating to those competitors and they may begin to worry more about who is behind them than trying to catch you.

Photo: up ahead looks like a perfect blind turn.  This would be a good time to open up some distance on the person who is trying to finish ahead of you at the finish.

As my running progressed, I enjoyed moving from the mental state of merely trying to figure out how to finish, to thinking about strategy - whether I could implement it or not!
Steve Gilbert 4/28/14 7:30 am

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by Rich Stiller  Speed work is really overrated for improving performance. I found out years ago that a runner can just as effectively race themselves into shape. The biggest issue is often balancing speed work and racing in the same week. Well, the answer is...DON'T. Let's say you are eight  weeks way from an important race. Rather than doing speed work every week pick 4-5 races and run those instead. You don't have to bash each race. Run 2-3 hard and the others as strong tempo runs. The benefits are that you'll have less chance of  getting injured plus your peak racing period will last longer.   I was most successful when I focused on getting in miles during the week and racing on the weekends.

My fastest 5k came off no speed work for three months prior. Just 3 or 4 tune up races. My best 2 miler came off of no speed work at all. I ran a 1500 meter on the track one week in 4:16, then ran a 3.5 mile club run in 18:22 and then ran two miles on the track in 9:44. This was a 14 second PR.  My one mile PR came from running the mile on successive weeks at all comers meets.  I went from 4:49-4:31 by running five one mile races. 

Does speed work have a place in a runners training schedule? Sure. Now and then run a speed workout on a non race week to get feedback on your conditioning. For example,  if I could run 3 x one mile in a 4:59 average, that told me I was ready to race. That didn't mean I had to go out and try to better that workout.  By the way, long time world class runner Mark Nenow rarely did speed work. He raced for speed. Joe Henderson wrote "Long Slow Distance" more than forty years ago. This was the main theme of his classic book.

Photo: Rich doing an easy training run with Bob, JoAnn, and Bill earlier in the year.