Supersonic

I've found a new favourite training method: overspeed.

Yeah, okay - it's not new. I remember doing it in the pool with bungee cords when I was twelve years old, and practicing its distant and less-liked cousin, drag training, at the track (more often that not, this was achieved by running with a tyre attached to a harness around your waist. Fun fun). But it's a good way to pass the time on the treadmill when it's wet and/or windy outside. And even when it's not. For whatever reason (I'm led to believe that due to the curvature of the Earth's surface, running at zero incline on the treadmill is child's play), it's so much easier to run on the spot at 16kph than it is up Symonds Street. Not that I've tried.

The theory is that running faster than you can handle for sustained periods of time (or in my case, at intervals of about 5 minutes on to 2 minutes off, increasing the speed incrementally for each 5 minute burst) improves your average running speed. Which is kind of what I need to do, if I'm to win a world title 65 days from now. It's similar to fartlek, but for some reason easier. You'll know if you've ever done fartlek. It's like dying. Over and over again for like, forty minutes. Mmm, fartlek.

Anyway, after finishing a spin class today I headed out to a treadmill for my overspeed session. You kind of look like a rabid maniac while you're at it, but I think I'm finally starting to get to a place in my life where I care slightly less about what a bunch of wallies trotting along at 8kph next to me think (it's taken a while).

Now I'm about to collapse and die. But in a good way.

Overspeed is the new black, yo.