What is the physiological benefit of this workout? 6 sets of 5x200m, decreasing rest

They're running about 6000m total at somewhere between 2 mile and 5000m pace, so a fairly high percentage of vo2 max for a large volume. Some benefit will come from that, if nothing else.

This will be a moderately difficult workout mentally at the end, so some benefit will potentially come from that.

The broken nature of the workout could be helpful if they're in a lot of races with many surges, etc.

But overall it is definitely an aerobic workout. It is tough to go anaerobic at slower than 2 mile pace. This workout will be fairly taxing, it definitely would need to be the main workout of the week.

Throw the assistant a bone and have the kids do this workout once a season. It's a bit of an oddball workout, but it isn't necessarily a "bad" workout.

Also as an aside from your last sentence: 5 miles at 85% of vo2 max is not "anaerobic conditioning." Also many high school runners can't even complete 5 miles at 85% of vo2 max, only your better runners can likely do that workout. 85% of vo2 max is about the pace you can handle for 45 minutes. So you're basically telling them to do a fairly long tempo at faster than tempo pace. For your kids in the middle, it becomes am all out effort. Your better kids will find it almost an all out effort. I'm not sure I see the point when a tempo would give 95% of the benefit and require only one recovery day rather than 3 or 4 days.

What it does is increase the pH level in the blood much higher than a long run would. It is a hard interval workout for many of the runners on a high school team. The very best runners may tolerate it well.

The rest will get injured, sick, or stale. You will definitely have to have a very strong base to benefit from such a workout. We are talking 100 mile weeks. Anyone who has listened to Joe Newton would agree with what I am saying on that.

How about starting out with 2 sets of 5 x 200 first and see how they recover the next couple of days? It's always better to undertrain than to over train. Joe had 180 guys on his team. He could afford to lose some!!!

Treasure in Clay wrote:

What it does is increase the pH level in the blood much higher than a long run would.

No.

The workout is *kind* of from Joe Newton. Your assistant might have one of his books? He was a famous high school XC coach who had a lot of success at York High School.

But the typical form is 20x200 broken into 4 sets of 5 reps with descending rest between reps and 2:30-3:00 rest between sets with reps done faster. It makes for a good speed (neuromuscular) and anaerobic workout.

I plan on using the Joe Newton form to sharpen for an upcoming 5K.

I'm not entirely sure what your assistant is going for. Why not just ask him? It looks like a threshold workout given the pace and the rest.

And yeah by "anaerobic conditioning" I think you mean "anaerobic threshold conditioning" (or lactate threshold).

Don't get too caught up in the "science" it's all kind of hand wavy anyway.

45min at 85% vo2max? So basically 10k pace?

biogen wrote:

The workout is *kind* of from Joe Newton. Your assistant might have one of his books? He was a famous high school XC coach who had a lot of success at York High School.

But the typical form is 20x200 broken into 4 sets of 5 reps with descending rest between reps and 2:30-3:00 rest between sets with reps done faster. It makes for a good speed (neuromuscular) and anaerobic workout.

I plan on using the Joe Newton form to sharpen for an upcoming 5K.

I'm not entirely sure what your assistant is going for. Why not just ask him? It looks like a threshold workout given the pace and the rest.

And yeah by "anaerobic conditioning" I think you mean "anaerobic threshold conditioning" (or lactate threshold).

Don't get too caught up in the "science" it's all kind of hand wavy anyway.

So much confused terminology being thrown around here...

Anaerobic Conditioning is a term taken directly from the Martin and Coe book "Better Training for Distance Runners." Whether you agree with the concepts in the book or not, it is one of the most complete, and scientifically supported books on running ever produced (though a bit dated at this point). Anaerobic Conditioning, within the parameters of the book is largely the same as what is more commonly termed Tempo or Threshold runs, thus a 5 mile run at 85% of vVO2 is quite specifically Anaerobic Conditioning/Tempo/Anaerobic Threshold. 5 miles is a bit on the longer side, but 85% is on the easier side of Tempo pacing, where runs in the 20 minute range should probably be done closer to the 88% mark, if we're getting super-technical. 85% of vVO2 is more like half-marathon pace, where that 88% is more in the 15k race pace range, obviously dependent on the development of the athlete. I'd have no reservations about a 10:00 2-miler of 5:28 miler doing 50-60 miles per week running 5 miles at this 'easy' tempo pace.

this 200 workout isn't really working any 'thresholds'. Given how short the rests are, and the progressive nature of the workout, athletes will flirt a bit with the Anaerobic Threshold in the first half of the workout, but the vast majority of the time they're going to be at around their vVO2 max pace, or within a few % either way of it. The pace is both too slow, and the durations too short to really kick the anaerobic system into high gear. This type of workout is a way to spend a LOT of time at vVO2 max pace without making it into a brutal workout.

When I was an athlete, I had a coach who had us do 32 x 200 at roughly 3k pace, working down toward mile pace for the last handful of reps, with 200m run in 90s for rest. The workout was a major challenge mentally, because you were on the track for over an hour without stopping, but I never thought it was insanely challenging physically, and recovery wasn't that much different from our more traditional workouts. This isn't to say I think it was a good workout, I think it was a dumb workout.

As for the OPs workout: the biggest issue is the rests in the couple sets. Either the rest between the sets needs to go way up to 3:00 or so, or the rest between reps needs to bottom out at :30 seconds. 5 x 200 at 3k pace with a 10s rest is only doable and responsible for them if they're coming off a longer rest from the set before, :60 isn't going to cut it.

How does a 10 second rest even work from a practical standpoint? I feel like you'd have to move faster during the "recovery" than you were moving during the rep to be back at the line and ready to start another repeat within 10 seconds of finishing the preceding rep.

At that point, you might as well just forget the rest and keep right on running.