Substituting tempo for mile repeats?

Repeats are run faster and target VO2 Max, esp. shorter repeats. Tempo runs are meant to raise your lactate threshold and are less intense. Most people start their tempo runs with 4 miles at pace (plus a mile or two warmup and cooldown).

If training for a half marathon or longer, I'd do tempos if I had to choose between tempos and mile repeats. If I was racing nickels and dimes, mile repeats would probably be better. But why choose, alternate your tempos and mile repeats.

If you want to self coach yourself, read what experts think and choose what you think is best for you. You've got no idea who is responding to you on the board so take their advise with a grain of salt.

You've said what you can run a 5KM in, but is that your goal distance? Our you running cross country, or across the country? Your training schedule should reflect your goals. Marathon? HM? nickels and/or dimes? Western States?

5k is my goal distance. I'm high Schiller building base right now.

5k is my goal distance. I'm high Schiller building base right now.

According to daniels, you can substitute mile repeats for a tempo run, but he will have you run the repeats at the same pace. So you would do them at the same 6 minute pace. Of course acording to him, your tempo runs would be at a little faster than 6 minute pace considering you are in 17:00 5k shape. Your pace would be more like 5:50 pace for the 4 mile tempo. His idea of cruise intervals as he calles them, you would do your mile repeats at the same 5:50 pace with about 1 minute rest. But, he would suggest that because you have a short rest, then you can do more volume, so maybe do 6 mile repeats with a minute rest, instead of the 4 mile tempo run. The extra volume would make up for the fact that you are getting short rests between.

I myself allow myself a slieghtly faster pace for the mile repeats, but topping out at 10k pace, or 5:40ish pace for you. Either way works. Running much faster than 10k pace you would be working on a different aspect of training and not your lactate threshold. Running as fast as 10k pace in my opinion is ok because even though it is a bit faster than threshold pace, you get a short rest which allows for the lactate level to drop a little, so you are criss-crossing back and forth above and below your threshold.

Hope this helps.

for base work you should alternate 4 mile tempo runs at about 6 min pace with 5x mile repeats at about the same pace. rest between and be anythwere from 1:30-6:00 min, or to put it another way anywhere from 1/4th to equal rest. i like to start out at equal rest and over the course of a few weeks bring the rest down.

do the tempo runs once a week and do strides 1-3 other days per week. if you want every once in a while do some moderate hill repeats. dont race them, run tempo effort up a hill that takes you about 1-2 minutes to climb and then jog back down.

if you dont want to do structured hill workouts run a route with rolling hills and everytime you come to an up hill try to maintain pace. for example if you usually run 7:30 pace on flat ground, try running 7:30 pace up the hill, your effort level with increase slightly but not much and it will make you stronger aerobically and on hilly terrain.

thanks guys.

so originally i thought 3mi tempos or 20min of tempo was the ideal distance. I know there are long tempos too, ~6miles, but thats more for training 10k and farther I assume.

But is a 20min tempo not as good as a 4mile. Why is 4 the distance Daniel's recommends and I've heard that someone else, maybe Salazar? recommends 20min at LT? I'll move up to 4 miles, it's not a big deal to me. I'd just like to hear the opinion on the 3miles or 20min tempo vs doing 4 miles.

Always think in terms of minutes, at least that's my recommendation. A 20 minute 5ker would run 4 miles at a hard floating pace in around 28 minutes. 10 years down the line that same runner could have improved to 14 minutes and run that same workout in 20 minutes. It's not wildly different but you'd end up under training as you get better. I think it's more consistent to think: 20 minutes at x effort rather than 20 minutes at x effort (or worse yet, pace). Don't get overly anal about the details either, just keep it somewhat organized so you don't get lost.

Anyway about your original question, the best advice I've ever gotten from letsrun was from something Wejo said. Practice running relaxed. Seriously.

I used to go hard on tempos, not "race hard" but still hard enough where I wasn't running relaxed. You want to aim for a pace that's fast but that keeps you relaxed and in control of every movement of your body. After you get that down, duration doesn't really matter.

I used to do a 10 minutes slow as hell warmup and if I felt like I had it in my legs, just keep picking up the pace every 5 minutes until I couldn't relax anymore. The rate of pick up differed and so did the overall duration, but I'd guess I almost always ended up at around the same pace. I also used to long intervals, some days were 10 x 5, others 5 x 8, etc. Pretty much the same jist but with 3 minutes of easy running and no stopping in between.

That approach combined with super easy recovery running (40-75 minutes at a old mans) on my off days (basically days where my legs just weren't ready for any hard training) turned from a 15:40 bum to a 14:20 bum during my college years.

Just FYI, I took that relax approach to everything, even hard intervals. If my coach had me do 3 x 1600, 800, 400 - I'd go fast but not leg failing fast. Always in control of my body and rhythm. I ended up going faster in those intervals than when I used to force it anyway, so it couldn't have hurt me. I seriously think a lot of runners never figure this out.

666 wrote:

20 minutes at x effort rather than 20 minutes at x effort

Er.. I meant: "x minutes at y effort rather than x miles at y effort or pace.

Yes. Guys doing tempos with 6 or 8 miles at pace (8 to 12 miles total) are usually training for HM's or Marathons.

If you are training for 5KM you certainly want your long run at over distance, but there is no reason to run tempo over distance. I don't have Daniels book in front of me, but I'm sure the 4 mile at tempo reference was meant for someone training for longer than 5KM.

Mile intervals seem plenty long for you, mixed in with shorter interval workouts. Speed endurance really isn't that important for you (compared to say a HM'er). Speed is more important. Put another way, you run fewer miles but you run them faster with your emphasis on building VO2 Max. Increasing Lactate Threshold is of secondary importance. You don't have to worry at all about training your body to burn fat like a marathoner. So you don't have to go that far even on your long run.

If you wanted you could do cruise intervals (2 x 1.5 miles?)in place of a tempo run. Read some other authors on this too. Go to runningtimes.com and see what articles they have. When you decide you want to move up in distance, then tempo will be your bread and butter. Right now, you are a short distance guy.

I wouldn't listen to this guy.

If you are a 17:00 5K guy a 18:00 3 mile is a just a little fast for a tempo (and is more like a time trial). The idea with a tempo is that you should try not to go anaerobic and you stay around the pace you could hold in a ten mile race.

If you are a H.S. runner building a summer base, stick to tempo runs. I am sure that the mile repeats will start once team practice begins.