Question is in the subject of the thread. I didn't keep track of the splits, I saw she ran the mile at basically the same pace as some of the 400s. Is this supposed to be VO2 max type work for middle distance runners? I don't understand the distances and pacing from a workout perspective.
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Really, no comments?
The workout is basically a short interval workout to increase speed endurance. The mile pace is to make race pace comfortable.
Scorpion_runner wrote:
The workout is basically a short interval workout to increase speed endurance. The mile pace is to make race pace comfortable.
Exactly what he said. V02 max work? lmao. Get outta here with that energy system bullsh*t. Coach Franklin works on a variety of paces and is a real individual coach within a team setting. They were just getting more comfortable at faster speeds.
Yeah I kind of agree with the sentiment that you're giving here. It's never made sense to me why people do these kinds of workouts. I question why you would want to work different systems in between working a specific system. Maybe that makes sense in theory, but wouldn't it be better to just do a VO2 max workout (5xmile for example) then do some 200m repeats at the end for speed. Why do it in between? I would think that would just interrupt the benefits of the workout at a pace. This becomes especially problematic if the period of recovery doesn't allow your body to be working at specifically VO2 max effort. Instead, if you're doing fast, 800m pace running, then your VO2 max speed will technically decrease relative to effort or you have to take much longer to cool down. I agree with what you're questioning, it makes no sense to me but hey they did win so is it a good system? Maybe.
Personally, I feel like I get the most out of a seaon by doing a few speed endurance type workouts with longer reps. These workouts teach you how to hurt and how to be aggressive in a way longer V02 max reps and speedier 200m reps cannot. I also think these workouts will tell you if you can actually be running a little faster in races and in v02 stuff than you are because you can be more aggressive with paces than you can in a race or a long workout, but you get a better feel of how the new pace would affect you than you do from ony 200m or 400m reps.
Attaching some short speed segments to the front AND back end of sets of Mile Repeats not only provides the race callusing effect from the Mile arepeats, it also trains going out hard and finishing hard.
Aside from Kurgat who dropped everyone, Half of NM team got off to a slow start yesterday and the team was still in 3rd at 4k, so the closing hard segment really came in handy.
mpdmghy wrote:
Personally, I feel like I get the most out of a seaon by doing a few speed endurance type workouts with longer reps. These workouts teach you how to hurt and how to be aggressive in a way longer V02 max reps and speedier 200m reps cannot. I also think these workouts will tell you if you can actually be running a little faster in races and in v02 stuff than you are because you can be more aggressive with paces than you can in a race or a long workout, but you get a better feel of how the new pace would affect you than you do from ony 200m or 400m reps.
This comment makes the most sense to me. Sometimes I see workouts with bizarrely varying intervals and I feel like they're just trying to maximize the pain of the workout or mess with the person's head or something. But I could definitely see how doing some easier short intervals (they definitely weren't going all out in the 400s) could change your mindset for the mile reps.
Thanks for the comments guys!
I watched the workout also. I'm thinking it was a cheap and easy way to increase the volume. The real aerobic money makers were the miles or the kilos, the 400s were in there just to increase the amount of time they were running at that pace.
OP was right that the 400s were run pretty much at the same pace as the longer reps, so the idea wasn't to mix short fast stuff in with longer stuff. I'm thinking that 5 x 1 mile going from 5:20-5:00 pace might have been too much of an ask for the ladies at that particular point in their training. Breaking it up makes it more do-able.
Speaking of time of the season. Coach said they had just run at Notre Dame but that the workout was their first one of the season? What gives with such a long delay in beginning quality work? Or, were they doing quality work in the form of fartlek, hill reps, tempo and just not calling them workouts? I have a hard time believing that those ladies were hitting those times at elevation as their first hard effort of the season.
First track workout is what he meant. They had already been doing workouts on the roads
Evdawg wrote:
Yeah I kind of agree with the sentiment that you're giving here. It's never made sense to me why people do these kinds of workouts. I question why you would want to work different systems in between working a specific system. Maybe that makes sense in theory, but wouldn't it be better to just do a VO2 max workout (5xmile for example) then do some 200m repeats at the end for speed. Why do it in between? I would think that would just interrupt the benefits of the workout at a pace. This becomes especially problematic if the period of recovery doesn't allow your body to be working at specifically VO2 max effort. Instead, if you're doing fast, 800m pace running, then your VO2 max speed will technically decrease relative to effort or you have to take much longer to cool down. I agree with what you're questioning, it makes no sense to me but hey they did win so is it a good system? Maybe.
You don´t train to "improve systems", you train to run faster.