I had a treadmill delivered on Saturday and I am looking for advice on various types of workouts for speed work. I want to experiment with some of the suggestions you may post to see what will work for me. I am open to any suggestions.

I also appreciate the advice.

Does your treadmill have built in hill programs? Running hills is a pretty good place to start your speed work. Hill running is the only thing I do that is even close to speed work, and I am getting faster.

How do hills help speed work? (Not being contradictory, I am SLOW and need big help! :D )

Hmmm....my TM has hill training....maybe thats something I should start doing- how does one incorporate that into their schedual? For instance this week I have a training run of 4 miles today, X for 50 tomorrow, rest, 4 miles, X for 40, run 8 and rest. Where would I put hill training? :D Id love to increase my speed! (cuz I aint got any!)

Love treadmills and speedwork!

You've got a lot of options...

Repeats/Intervals: You can run repeats at various distances. Typically, the shorter the distance, the faster you run it. Assuming the treadmill display is in miles, I'll reference in miles (not meters).

1/4 miles - run fast for 1/4 mile, then slow down to a light jog for 1/4 mile. Walk if you need to. Do this for 'x' number of times. Start with 4 or 5. Each week add another repeat. When you get up to 10, you'll be smokin'! The same applies to 1/2 mile repeats - though you should run them slower than the 1/4 mile repeats. I've gone up to 2 mile repeats...

Ladders: This may be my favorite run. Start at a pace slightly slower than your race pace. Pick the distance you want to use (1/2 mile or mile works best). At each distance mark, increase the speed by a set amount (I like to go .5 mph). For instance... start at 5mph. At the 1 mile mark increase to 5.5mph. At the 2 mile mark go to 6.0mph. Then 6.5mph... etc.

Tempo runs: Run a warm up and then run for 20 - 40 minutes at a pace faster than your marathon pace. These are great runs!

Fartlek: Just change you pace/incline however you want. Run some fast sprints, some slow stuff, some middle of the road pace... just change it however you want, whenever you want. Fartlek. Great word!

Hills: Hills are great, too. Hills build strength, which improves speed and can increase stride length. Set the incline and go!

You would want to incorporate hill work into one of those 4 mile runs. This could possibly make you more tired than your regular runs so you might want to consider putting a rest day after a workout like that and then cross train the next day.

Hill intervals increase the exertion level and increase the heart rate dramatically. You want to pick a speed and incline that brings your heartrate to 85 - 92% of your max heart rate (probably around a 4 - 5% incline) and perform this interval for 3 -10 minutes depending on your level of fitness with a couple of minutes of active recovery in between. You want to repeat this between 3 - 8 times depending on your specific goal of the workout. You should do a warm up and cool down to complete the workout.

Hills are speed work in disguise :) You are increasing the workload of the muscles (both legs AND heart) even though you may not be running up them any faster. But the improvement you gain aerobically and in the legs will contribute to making you faster on the flats. If given the choice I pick hills over sprints anytime ;)

Thank you for the advice so far. Yes, the treadmill has rolling hills, golf course, race and intervals. Those are the buttons I remember there may be a few more. I will try out the hills first tomorrow and see how it goes. We have the half maraton Saturday so I will start it with not as many repeats.

Keep the advice coming.

Great advice!