RTTC #234 What Speed Workouts Can a Slow Runner Do That Are Simple?

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali breaks down the four simple speed workouts built into her free training plans: hill repeats, 30-20-10, progression runs, and tempo runs. 

And she explains exactly why each one matters for runDisney race day. 

She covers the science behind sprint duration and recovery time, introduces the "pink, green, and gray zone" pacing concept, and shares how consistent speed work can lead to real, measurable pace improvements in as little as six weeks. 

Dr. Ali also gets personal, sharing her own recent pace test results to illustrate how these workouts translate directly to long run and race day performance.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

• Follow me on Instagram @rundisneydpt
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• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about what are speed workouts a slow runner can do that are simple. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Ally, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney parks. One of the things when it comes to speed workouts that my runners or runners in my audience will tell me. So this could be somebody who is in stronger, faster finisher with me. This could be somebody who follows me on Instagram. Some of the things I'm noticing that keep coming up are I just go and run. I just go and run. I run more. I was told, like, practice like you play. If you just keep running more, you will get faster. So that's what I've been doing. And I have plateaued. And now people are saying, well, I should be doing speed workouts or I should be doing strength workouts. And that's what will get me faster. But I have no idea what to do. It's so intimidating seeing people post things like four by four hundreds, eight by two hundreds, eight by four hundreds, strides. What am I doing? How do I do it? Can't even wrap my brain around thinking about doing this, let alone actually devise a plan and follow it. Welcome. I am so glad you are here. Let's talk about it. So if you have downloaded one of my free training plans, you see on your training plan, it says something about speed workouts. And at the time of recording this, it will say something like 30, 20, 10, Hill, progression, or tempo. Maybe in the future, as I continue to update the free training plans, that may change. But at the time of recording this, that's what it says. And I, those are my four favorite speed workouts for slow runners and runners who use run walk intervals, which is 90% of my audience. It is 90 to 95% of my stronger, faster finisher runners. There are a handful of runners who work with me who run only, and the run-only crowd can also use these because they are simple enough to follow. And the walk intervals that are used in them are used for recovery breaks. So whether you're doing run walk intervals or you run only, but you need some simple speed workouts, this is where it's at. So right now, dopey marathon, goofy, wine and dine, half marathon, wine and dine, two course challenge, those training plans just started in the past couple of weeks. I have already gotten five questions about the speed workout. So I was like, hmm, it's time to bring the actual speed workouts back around in the podcast to give some insight on how to do those. Now, of course, as with the podcast, I'm gonna give you information that you can then take to move forward with it. But this will be generalized information. This is not going to be specific to your case. That's what I do in Stronger, Faster Finisher. So if you have not done speed workouts before, you downloaded my free training plan and you're looking at this and you're like, what the heck is a hill workout? How long do I do it? How long do I need to rest? What incline do I do it if I'm doing it on a treadmill? What incline do I do it at outside? Like, what am I looking for? What's a hill? How steep, right? So let's talk about the different ones. I'll start with hills first because that one I got two questions on. So two of the five questions were about hill workouts. So let's start there. So hill workouts, the goal. Now remember, if you have been following along, I talk a lot about running with purpose. Every run has a purpose. Every run has a goal. We don't just willy-nilly go out and run. Because when we do that, when we have no plan and no guidance, how are we going to track that we are better in the future? And how are we guaranteeing that what we are doing will make us better for the future? We need a plan. Part of that comes with having a goal because you need the goal first to start devising the plan, right? Like I tell my runners, I can't schedule your training plan for you until I know what your race is. The goal is usually the race, right? Like I want to finish this race. Maybe they also have a time goal with it. But first and foremost, what race are you doing? Where are we at? Are we doing Dopey? Are we doing a springtime surprise 10 miler? Are we doing princess 10K? I need to know the date. Are we doing Wine and Dying 5K? I need to know which race, which distance, which date. So I know where we're going. And then we can figure out, okay, where are we starting from as well? Right. And every run has a purpose. The purpose of the hill is to get your body used to doing the ramps at Run Disney, right? We have those on-off ramps. And then throughout the course, there are other elements where there's some elevation change, right? We have um, you know, going in some parts of Epcot as examples, dips and coming back up around the boardwalk. Depending on which race you're doing, the race course is going to be a little bit different. So the exact place that you go and have some elevation changes may be different race to race. The longer distances where you're going out on the highway, you are going to have those on and off ramps. That's what the hill is training you for. That's what this hill workout is training you for. You don't need to go crazy and practice running up the hill for five or 10 minutes at a time. You, I recommend doing 30-second intervals, partly because many, many, many runners in my crowd, in my audience, are using 30-30 intervals. So you may not need to run more than 30 seconds because you're doing 30-30 intervals. And also, even if you aren't doing 30-30 intervals, there are going to be points where you can just walk part of the hill. You should be sprinting so fast in the hill workout that you need to be done at 30 seconds. You don't need to sprint that fast on race day. You train real hard so that race day is easier. And so you won't have to go so hard on race day. So even if you will be going up that hill for longer than 30 seconds, and maybe in future races, when I do them, I'll time it. I'll see how long the ramps take to go up and go down. That's just something I haven't done in the past. But for the most part, you want to keep sprinting to a very short duration. 30 seconds, maybe 45 seconds max. Max. So if something is an all-out sprint in my training programs, they're going to be 30 seconds or less. We only need to go 30 seconds. So that's a little bit of the scientific background of why you don't need to go more, but you should be going so hard up that hill that you need to be done after about 30 seconds. But I want, I don't want you to go so hard that you can't do it for the 30 seconds. So there's a balance in there. And so when you're doing a hill workout, it's sprint up the hill 30 seconds, recover two minutes. So if you're outside, you're walking down that hill back to the bottom, and then hanging around for however length of time you need to either get to that two minutes of recovery timeline or longer to get you recovered, whichever one comes second. In the beginning repetitions, like in the you will do 10 repetitions of that hill workout, of that hill sprint. So it's 30-second sprint, two minute recovery, 10 times. In the first couple of times, maybe reps one, two, or three, in a in a hill speed workout, you may think, oh, I don't need this full two minutes. And maybe you don't. Maybe you are fully recovered, have caught your breath before the two minutes is up. Take that full two minutes because by reps seven and eight, you are going to need, need to have rested. If you push through that first two, two or three rounds where you don't rest completely, your body's going to hate you by rep seven and eight, at least, maybe even sooner. But your body does need to recover for two, maybe even three or four minutes after a 30-second sprint. Your body needs to regenerate that ATP, which your body uses for energy. It takes that long for your body to regenerate it. Same thing with when you lift really heavy weights. Your body needs that time to regenerate that ATP. So if you've ever felt things like your legs feel weak after doing a hard sprint workout or a heavy lifting workout, your legs feel weak, like jello, and it takes some time for them to come back. That is one of the feelings you feel when it doesn't have the energy to work. You need the two minutes to recover. So a hill workout goal is to get used to just getting your body up that hill, getting your body up that ramp. Now, in the workouts, in training, it's going to be a sprint. It may or may not be a sprint on race day. I actually walk up the ramps on race day. I do the hill workouts. So if I am like looking at my watch and I'm thinking, oh, if I run up this, I know the next character that I want is right there. Like I could run up it. But for the most part, I don't do that on Run Disney race days. I take them nice and easy so that I can enjoy myself. I can go from character to character. I have time to go to the bathroom. I can stop and see people. At this point, people come up to me on the course and say, hi. So I work in buffers so that I'm not just like whizzing past everybody and whizzing past all the character stops, but I still practice them and I know my body because I've practiced them. I know what I'm going to feel like and how long it's going to take me to recover after that sprint. I usually don't want to deal with that on race day. So I usually walk up them, maybe a jog, but I get to make that decision on race day because I've practiced it. So I have options. I can sprint up if I need to or want to, but I don't have to. So we just in Stronger Faster Finisher, one of my runners pulled up that there was an elevation change that had incline, like percent incline. And on Marathon 2026, the max incline that I saw was like 4.3%. So that's perfect because I typically recommend if you're on the treadmill, do 5% and then whatever kind of hill you have around you. You may not know what the percent incline is. Maybe you do, maybe it says it, but you might not know. Just use whatever hill is available to you. You want it to be relatively steep. You know, you're not doing a straight up, but you should, if you were going down it on a bike, you should still have control over your pedals, but you should be picking up speed, right? Like if you ride a bike, you know what that feels like. And the hill workouts are 45 minutes. You do 10 rounds of the 30 seconds sprint, two-minute walk down. So each round is two and a half minutes. Two and a half minutes times 10 is 25 minutes. Perfect timing because you have a 10-minute warm-up and a 10-minute cooldown on either side of it. You may also have a five-minute easy run ahead of that to get you going. Some runners like that. So that may change that timeline just a little bit, maybe make it 50 minutes, or you do a few less, few fewer uh repetitions of the hill workout. So that's the hill. Remember, the purpose is get your body used to going uphill, going at an incline for those ramps. Now I have had runners ask me, well, should I be getting used to doing the decline? Sure, you can. I find that only one out of 10 runners notices that they really need to practice the decline. So you will get that practice in the hill workout when you start walking back down that hill. Because if you're running up it on race day, walk down it. Or if you're doing workouts outside, incorporate some hills, like just some small portions of it during an easy run. So you get used to going down that decline if you want to. Like I said, one out of 10 runners come to me and say that they had an issue on the decline. And it usually has something to do with they've had a knee problem in the past and that gives them some trouble. So it's less of the fact that they've practiced it and more of the fact that they've had an injury that they've been battling or rehabbing. So when you're on the treadmill, I don't think you need to do a decline. I've actually never come in contact with a treadmill that does decline, but I have recently learned that some treadmills do actually do a decline. So if you really feel like you need to actually practice walking down that decline, you can, like on the treadmill, you have to walk down the hill when you're outside because you have to get back down to the hill. You don't just sprint up the hill, wait at two minutes at the top of the hill and then keep going. You know, if it's a really long hill, I don't recommend that because it just doesn't really make sense for the type of workout. So that's hills. Next workout is 302010. So the purpose of 302010 is to get you to be able to do a change in pace, a variety of paces for different scenarios that may come up on race day. So one scenario is you get caught behind people doing five across, and you need to get around them. And so you start going a little bit faster, and then maybe you sprint past them to really make sure you have a good headway ahead of them so that you don't play this, you know, cat and mouse game the whole time. And then the 30 is there for the slower or the walking pace. So 30, 20, 10 is 30 seconds jog, 20 seconds run, 10 seconds sprint. If you don't like those terms, jog, run, sprint, that's okay. Just think of it as 30 seconds of pace one, 20 seconds of pace two, and 10 seconds of pace three. Pace one is your slowest, pace two is middle of the road, and pace three is an all-out sprint. That helps mimic a 30-30 run-walk interval because you can use that 30 seconds for walking if you need to or if you want to to really mimic 30-30. And then 20 seconds of running and 10 seconds of sprinting. You also practice hitting and exceeding your upper limits on this sprint portion. And if you've heard me talk about the gray zone, you know you need to hit and exceed your upper limits to get faster. We have pink miles, which are easy peasy lemon squeezy, the slowest you could possibly run. Those are for your long runs and your easy runs. Those are synonymous, but sometimes that run, that easy run isn't actually long. Sometimes it's 45 minutes, sometimes it's two miles, right? And so I use those two terms synonymously because they're both easy pace. They're pink miles, the color pink. Then we have hard sprinting workouts, which all four of these speed workouts are part of. Those upper limits, those are green paces. Those are fast, those are hard. If you didn't know, pink and green, when you blend them together, make gray. If we think of a line, on the left side are our easy miles, the pink miles. So that's in pink, the line on the end of that one. Think of a vertical line at the very end of this horizontal line. Then all the way on the other end of the spectrum are our green runs, our green paces, our green miles. Those are fast and hard. Those are the hardest we can ever do. Those are green. And then if we go in closer and closer and closer to the middle, we get darker and darker gray. We want to stay out of the gray zone for most of our training. We either want to be pink or we want to be green. And on occasion, we need to be hitting and surpassing green in order to get faster. If you don't hit your upper limits and exceed them, you never exceed them. And then you don't get faster. If you always run in gray miles, if you always run in gray paces, you're neither slow nor fast, and you will get nowhere. You won't get faster. You may even actually get slower because you're so exhausted, because you aren't going slow enough on your easy runs to recover. So then you have no energy to actually push your limits on the green paces, and everything stays gray. And then you go three, six, nine, 12 months, two years of no change in pace. And then you get frustrated. You may even get injured because you're not resting enough and going slow enough, right? And so with this 30, 20, 10, we have some easy miles, we have middle of the road miles, and then we have hard sprinting time. I said miles, but these are seconds 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 10 seconds. So we have easy time, we have middle of the road time, and we have hard, fast sprinting time. So we we give ourselves that recovery time from the sprint, right? That's what we're doing. We're sprinting for 10 seconds, and you need that 30 seconds recovery. And 20 seconds in between there gives you practice of practicing something in the middle of the road, and it helps transition you from the slower to the faster. Could you just go slow to fast? Yes, it's not enjoyable. And it is, it really isn't functional. I've I have tried all sorts of different speed workouts over the past seven years. I've tried so many different ones, and these are the ones that I really liked. And then my clients also liked. I've had clients do all sorts of varieties of speed workouts. These four are the ones that stick. They're hard enough that they actually get you faster in six weeks. In six weeks, I see runners make improvements by about one minute per mile faster in as soon as six weeks when you do it right and they stick. And then you just keep getting faster and faster from there. So 30, 20, 10, you're doing multiple rounds. So you're doing three rounds of 30, 20, 10. Do that three times, take a two-minute rest break. You can walk it or I mean you could stand still. I like walking to keep myself moving. And you do that a couple of times in a row. So the 30, 20, 10, 30, 20, 10, 30, 20, 10, and then two minute rest, total, that's five minutes. You want to do five of those to make a 25 minute block. And then you have your 10 minute warm up at the beginning and 10 minute cooldown at the end, and that's a 45 minute speed workout. You should be going so hard on that sprint that by the time round four comes around, you're cursing me and you are. Saying, is this over yet? When is my walk break? When is my cooldown? Because you're going so hard. Then we have progression runs. Progression runs are the goal is to progressively get faster. So this is a good one to mimic race day if you start off a little bit slower than you normally would by the middle toward the end of your race. So I usually recommend like get your legs about you, right? Like start off a little bit slower. It's also usually pretty packed in a race, right? Right at the beginning. And it all depends on what wave you're in. And actually, no, it just depends on the makeup of the wave. I have seen at Run Disney races, some waves people go straight out and sprint, and other waves, people kind of dawdle and they start off walking. And they could be in the same corral. So they're of the same paces. And just how that wave started, that's what people are doing. So you may get caught in a wave where everybody starts off walking and you can't start off running. So a progression run helps you start off a little bit slower and go faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. In a progression run, you you kind of hit a peak. So it's more like a pyramid or a ladder where you build, build, build, build, you hit a peak and then you start coming back down. I do it that way for sustainability. I have done it where you just keep going on the progression run and you hit a peak and that's the end of the workout. And holy cow, is that a miserable workout? Does it get you faster? No, because you don't ever want to do that run ever again. But when you do it, this pyramid or ladder style, it's still a progression and it's still progressively working your body harder. What happens is you start building, building, building, you hit that peak, and that's the hardest that you are running. And then you start going slower and slower and slower. But because you have all of this cumulative time that you've been running faster, these last paces, even though they are similar to the very beginning paces that you did, your heart is actually still working harder because you have all of that cumulative time that you've been doing. So it's a great balance where you still make your heart and your lungs work really, really hard, your muscles work really, really hard because you're already tired, but it's not as miserable as going straight up and just being done at the top. Again, remember, I have tried this over and over and over again. That one used to be miserable. And now progression run is my favorite. And so the way you do progression run is it's going to depend on what your run intervals are. If you're doing 30-30 run-walk intervals, it's going to be a 30-30 split. You're going to run for 30 seconds, walk for 30 seconds. And then the next time you go to run, it's going to be a little bit faster than your last run. And then you'll walk. Your walk interval stays the same the entire time. And you're going to keep going up and up and up until you hit a max number and then you start coming back down. And you will know how far you have to go up because it's going to depend on what your run intervals, excuse me, your run walk intervals are, because doing 30-30 is going to be different than somebody who's doing 45-30, 45-45, one minute, one minute, 1530, stuff like that. So you need all of those run walk intervals total to be 25 minutes. So if you do 30, 30 run-walk intervals, you're going to have 25 of those segments. And so hit the halfway point after 12 of them, that 12th run is going to be your max. That's going to be your highest. And then you're going to start coming back down. But it's going to be different if you do 45 seconds running and 30 seconds walking. You want your progression run to match what your run walk intervals are, but no more than one minute of running. Trust me on that. I did it. It was no fun. Because I do three minutes, one minute for run walk intervals. And I tried doing a progression run where I do one minute, one minute, one minute, and each of those minutes are faster. And then I walk. That was awful. When I switched to one minute, one minute and did an even split. That was so much better. It was still really challenging, but it was doable. It was not sustainable. It was not doable doing it three minutes, one minute. I have not found a runner, maybe they just haven't told me, but I haven't found a runner that has successfully done that and not felt um incredibly sick after and unwell. Like it is just it's too much. So keep it with whatever your run walk intervals are. Or if your run walk intervals are surpassing one minute of running, just stick with one minute, one minute, or one minute, whatever your walking interval is. So if you do three minutes running, 30 seconds walking as your normal run walk intervals, do one minute running, 30 seconds walking. Trust me on that. Okay. And then of course you have a 10-minute warm-up and a 10-minute cooldown on either end of that. So total 45-minute workout. And then finally, you have a tempo run. Tempo run is a really good way to practice race pace. I have runners tell me all the time why don't we ever practice running race pace on a long run? The goal of a long run is to build time on your feet, to be build your body's ability to stay upright and keep moving forward for however long you think your race is going to take you. So if your marathon's going to take you seven hours, you need to progressively give yourself more time on your feet every week for seven months. If you think your half marathon is going to take you three hours and 45 minutes, you need to progressively add more time in the form of more miles to get you to be able to be on your feet and keep moving forward for three hours and 45 minutes. The speed workouts in the shorter bouts get you faster, which then does translate to a faster, easy pace, which then your faster easy pace is used on your long run. Like I just did a new pace test because it's been eight weeks since my first pace test. I recommend pace testing every six to eight weeks. And I got, I went from now, I'm going to share my paces. My paces don't matter to you. Okay. I share them only because it makes it conceptually easier than me saying one pace, like, and then I got 30 seconds faster or whatever it is. It just makes it easier. But please do not compare your paces to mine. My paces have no relevance to your paces. The pace you are going right now is wonderful for you. You are a runner no matter what your pace is. Okay. So I'm sharing my paces just so you can conceptualize what I'm talking about. I went from 5.5 miles per hour as my easy pace. And now my new easy pace is 5.7 miles per hour. So I will still run easy on my long runs. But since I just pace tested, my new easy pace is what I will use for my long runs. So that's 5.7 miles per hour. Whereas before it was 5.5. So as you get faster, you're going to use new paces. And so that's how you practice quote unquote going faster on long runs because that's your new easy pace. Now, of course, the easy pace has to be easy. And when you go through Stronger Faster Finisher or the back-of-the-pack speed program with me, we go over how to pace test and what easy pace actually means and how to make sure that you really are going easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? I cannot stress enough how easy your long run has to be in order for you to have the energy to do what you need to do on these speed workouts. Okay. And then doing these speed workouts will get you faster in the long run for literally for the long run and for race day. I I promise you, I know I am a stranger on the internet. And I'm trying so many different ways to relay this message to you so that you don't just have to willy-nilly believe a stranger on the internet. And that's one of these the reasons I am sharing my whole 10K race journey, my proof of time training that I'm doing, so that you can hear in real time what has been happening, whether it's good or bad, like the three weeks that I missed in training. But anyway, I have so many runners say, why can't I practice race pace on the long run? How am I going to be able to run race pace on race day if I never practice it? The tempo run is the perfect place to do it. Okay. And yes, the tempo run may never get past 60 minutes. You'll be doing it for 45 minutes for a while, maybe 50, maybe 55, maybe 60. That comes later. I do recommend getting through a full training phase first, a full training block first, but that is potential. Okay. But use your tempo run as the time to practice your race pace. And if you're not there yet or you don't know what your race pace is, that's you can you can just practice something that's faster than easy pace, but slower than what anticipated race pace is, and then build yourself up from there. So I do recommend doing tempo run where you do like five minutes of your race pace intervals, and then five minutes of your easy run walk intervals, and then five minutes of your race pace run intervals, and then your five minutes of your easy pace intervals. And you go back and forth and you're still using your run walk intervals for both of them. Just the running portion is either race pace or easy pace. And then your walk interval stays the same. That's where you get to practice doing race pace. And then I've had runners say, well, if I only practice it for 45 minutes, but my race is going to take me three and a half hours. How am I going to do that for three and a half hours? Well, I don't recommend you do it for three and a half hours. Your race, if you look at what your watch says, you're going all sorts of different paces throughout the race. Some you're going faster than your average race pace, and sometimes you're going slower than your average race pace, but it comes out to be the average, right? So sometimes you're standing and waiting in line in a character stop, and sometimes you're sprinting ahead to the next character stop. And so you're never going to go exactly the same pace throughout the race. I in Run Disney races, I just haven't seen it happen consistently because you want to go, you need to go to the bathroom. You want to go to the bathroom. Nobody wants to pee their pants. Uh, you want to go and stop for characters, you want to go for a castle photo. And so you stop for a length of time and then you play catch up. And that's okay. And so practicing tempo run at race pace for the 45 minutes will still translate to race day because you will be able to do that for a 45 minute segment, right? Or maybe a five-minute segment. That's one of the reasons why that tempo pace, excuse me, that tempo run is one pace for five minutes and then a slower pace or a different pace for five minutes, and then another pace for five minutes, and then you go back and forth and you toggle back and forth between the two, because that's similar to what you're doing on the race. But that is the time to practice your race pace. So that's how you utilize these different speed workouts. And of course, remember that's generalized information. Make sure you do your pace test first. Find out what your easy, moderate, and hard paces are, find out what your walk interval is, what your warm-up is, and what your cooldown paces are. And then test those every six to eight weeks because six to eight weeks is enough time to have practiced these four speed workouts on a rotation. Do one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, the next week, do the next one on Tuesday, and the next one on Thursday, and then you rotate through. So in a six to eight week time period, you have practiced all of those at least three, maybe four times before you pace test again. And that's enough time to make a difference and start seeing progress on your next pace test. And then the next time you do it, you use your new paces for those.