The Beautiful Simplicity of Progression

I've been very lucky in my running career to rub shoulders with some of the world's best athletes and coaches. I've learned a lot in these encounters but the one idea that has stuck with me the most is the idea of the progression run. The idea has been around for a while but it really took on meaning for me in 2001 when I was training under the man who is probably considered the most successful coach in the world. Dr. Gabrielle Rosa was the coach of the Fila Discovery Program in Kenya, and the Fila Discovery USA program that was alive for a short time here in the states. He is the coach of Paul Tergat and several other successful Kenyan marathon runners.
Anyway, back to the progression run(I've also heard it called a pick-up, or fulcrum run. The idea, according to Rosa, is that every run you do should be a progression. Start out slow, finish faster. It's pretty simmple and it makes sense. For the beginning of any run, you should start out easy, let the body, muscles, and joints get a nice liesurely warm-up. Over the middle miles, slowly pick up the pace, Finally over the last third of the run, start to work a little. This teaches the body the most important thing you can do in a race; to relax while running fast. It also teaches you to get used to running negative splits, which is a great way to race successfully.
Now in the Fila camp, we American runners didn't have a complete understanding of the concept. We would routinely start out at 6:30 pace and finish in close of 5 minute pace for a 10 mile run (And that was our easy day!). It wasn't until one of the runners did a training stint in Kenya that we discovered how much more exagerated the Kenyan model was. He said that these top runners in the world would often start out at 10 minute pace or slower! Really giving the body time to get warmed up and loose before cranking it up over the second half. No wonder we had a lot more injuries than they did. We were running too hard from the beginning!
Anyway, I still try to do almost every run this way. I don't finish at 5:00 pace very often any more, but I do try to slowly pick it up as I run. This way my body becomes more accustomed to a variety of paces, instead of getting locked into one.
It seems to work as long as I remember to take it easy on my easy days. The influx of speed on easier days has allowed some of the runners to actually do speed work (i.e. intervals) less often than we do it here in the states, while still maintaining world class speed.
Andy