Gary was a good athlete and he was successful at every sport he tried. Gary was a hard worker also. He was always the one shooting hoops after practice, staying after football to lift weights, and doing extra sprints during track practice. He thought that the harder he worked the more successful at sports he would be. This philosophy worked in high school and the athlete of the year award was presented to him at the end of his senior year. Because of his accomplishments, he received a scholarship for track and cross-country to a good college.

Gary knew that this scholarship was his ticket to a college degree and he wanted to do all he could to keep it. So Gary began his summer long training, which he believed would be his ticket to college success. Every day Gary ran grueling workouts. Often he ran miles of fartleks and then topped of his runs with accelerations. Other days he ran successive four hundred meters dashes in sixty seconds with one minute of rest in between. Gary thought that the more pain he felt during the workout the greater the dividends he would receive. Workout after workout, session after session, Gary continued the hard workouts until the summer was over.

There are many benefits to this type of training. One is that it teaches the body not to incur oxygen debt quickly, and it teaches the body to recover at a high rate (Gilmore and Lydiard 16). Also, this type of running makes the body adapt to the pressure of running for long periods each day. So after a while the body can run and run and run and not get worn out. This is called endurance. In a race this is important. It gives the runner confidence so that he can run the race as hard as possible and still be able to finish strong (Higdon 47). In the later parts of the race, when the rest of the field is tiring, the distance-trained runners will excel.

However speed is not all good. There are also several negative things that speed work brings with it. Fast running is hard work. The faster it is, the harder on the runner?s body it is. With speed work, stress factors multiply (Sheehan 14). One physiologist named Hans Selye begs runners to keep in mind how the body responds or adapts to stress (Sheehan 14). First the body experiences alarm. Then the body responds by strengthening itself and building resistance. Finally the body is overcome by exhaustion. These are the steps of general adaptation syndrome (Sheehan 14). Speed work is no different than any other type of stress on the body. Daily speed work will break down the body and bring the body to exhaustion.

Gilmour, Garth, and Arthur Lydiard. Running, The Lydiard Way. Mountain View, California: World, 1978.

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