For years I, and most other runners, had a simplistic approach: run a lot of miles to develop endurance, and then run fast to develop speed; put the two together and race well. When training like this, I ran dozens of track races where I was going well, but would fade badly over the last two or three laps. I always thought I needed to do more speed work to make me faster, but I was wrong. I didn’t need speed I needed lactic acid tolerance.
