In the December 2009 issue of Running Times, Roy Benson talks about how to gauge perceived effort while training. If you want to get faster, your training must include variety. Sure, you'll be able to complete a 5k if you go out and run 30 minutes (or more) every day at the same pace, but you'll never get much faster. Instead, your training regimen must include speed work, recovery days, long runs, and threshold runs. And Benson tells readers to use Hemingway and Faulkner if they have trouble gauging their effort.
Recovery runs, he says, should be completed at a conversational pace. You have to make yourself go this slowly. How do you know if you are going slow enough at a pace that ensures recovery from a tough workout the day before? Benson says, "You can carry on a full conversation with sentences that last as long as William Faulkner's."
Threshold running is my least favorite. You run at 80-85 percent effort--an uncomfortable pace--for three to four miles. Benson says this should be about 30 seconds slower than your 5k pace, running hard enough to require "serious huffing and puffing." And how do you know if your effort is uncomfortable enough? Benson says that "your rapid breathing will cut down the conversation to Hemingway's level of shortness ('He caught a fish.' Huff, puff. 'It was big.')."
Of course, Benson isn't exactly right, though his is a common misconception about Hemingway's style. Hemingway had his share of short sentences, but the hallmark of his style was the simple words, many of which were only two or three syllables, that were contained in long sentences. These sentences were often a series of clauses linked by coordinating conjunctions. He was able to construct sentences of 70 or 80 words that were perfectly comprehensible, throwing off the prescriptivists who say that sentences should only be 20-25 words (if all of your sentences are in that 20-25 word range, you'll sound like a robot, and a monotonous one at that). Here's a 40 word sentence from A Moveable Feast:
"The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside."
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