Over the past decade or so, most of the change in my running habits has happened by accident. I stopped wearing a watch for some time during runs, because I was more frustrated with slower times than excited about fast times. My Friday evening long runs started on a day where I was frustrated after work, then decided to keep running instead of stopping, giving the extra bonus of going out without worrying about wanting to wake up early for a run. Within the last few weeks, I restarted some speed work in my week.
Generally, I just run to get the distance. Pace is meaningless as long as it feels ok and I hit at least 40 miles a week with one day of at least 10 miles. During a streak of challenging mornings, I managed to get out of the house for a run, but with not enough time to run as far as I would have liked, so I decided to compensate by putting in a higher effort. Now, a high effort run is once a week.
My weekly long run serves an added benefit of making every other run feel a bit shorter and easier. Obviously, a weekly high effort run would make every other run a bit faster as it shifts the mentality. Doing speed runs and long runs is a bit like politics, I guess, shift what the frame of reference is. Of course, none of this is really new to me, as the theme in high school was Jack Daniels, LSD, and speed. These three items were the key to success. Perhaps in a few weeks or years I will refer to the Jack Daniels book on running to make a complete shift to training rather than running again, and then I will go full circle again, which is suits the sport well .