My first workout in months, what should I do?

3 x 1600m at the track (or just find a mile on the roads) might not be a bad idea. 2-3 mins. rest. This would give you a decent baseline to know where you're at right now, and then you can structure workouts better from that.

Otherwise, without knowing any of your mileage or other runs, 6 mile tempo at 6:00 pace.

YOu'll know pretty quickly what feels hard and what doesn't so just go on perceived exertion and alter the pace from there.

Honestly, you just have to run harder and see how fast you go/how you feel.

10 x 300 at 5k pace. Super easy and you get a bit of speed in those legs.

Is this thread update? wrote:

10 x 300 at 5k pace. Super easy and you get a bit of speed in those legs.

I didn't intend to make this an update thread but I can update it after my workout tonight so people on LRC can get a better bearing of my fitness and help me to structure future training

fartlek, something like .60 up/120 down... gets the legs moving, HR up but no hard targets as far as time/distance. Easy to bail if you feel any lingering affects of the injury.

EZ10Miler wrote:

fartlek, something like .60 up/120 down... gets the legs moving, HR up but no hard targets as far as time/distance. Easy to bail if you feel any lingering affects of the injury.

Exactly. Something like 3 x 1600 is a horrible idea. I suggest something like 5 x 2:00 fast / 3:00 recovery. Go 100% by feel.

Hi, I have never posted a picture on LR before so I did it like this.

Ended up doing the 5x(2:00 hard 3:00easy) Feedback on the workout? I want to break 16 next XC. I pushed the rest a little too hard because I was so excited to be on a track again that the last two reps I went a little slower.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Buz9BC4DZ-t/

Your easy 3 minutes could have been slower so you could have hit the fast 2 faster. I bet you go too hard on easy days too

Hi, OP here again,

The workout last week went relatively well and I haven't done anything else higher intensity since (excluding consistent long runs once a week). For my next workout tonight, I am thinking of doing either the same workout trying to hit around 5:00-5:10 for the fast 2 minutes and go a little slower for the easy 3 minutes or increasing the time to 3:00 on fast and keep the rest to 3:00 slow. Does anybody have any advice they can give me?

Also, does anybody know if it would be alright for me to do tempos year round? I want to make sure that I don't peak early.

Keep the pace the same (except try to maintain for the last two “on” segments) and stretch it to 3 on/3 off.

Next week will be time to start trying something completely different for a couple weeks (like 3 x mile @ CV w/ 90s recovery followed by 3 x 200, which could then become 4 x mile and 4 x 200) before returning to this, when you could either stretch it to 6 x 3 on/3 off or keep it at 5 x but shorten the rest to 2:30.

Not An Expert wrote:

Keep the pace the same (except try to maintain for the last two “on” segments) and stretch it to 3 on/3 off.

Next week will be time to start trying something completely different for a couple weeks (like 3 x mile @ CV w/ 90s recovery followed by 3 x 200, which could then become 4 x mile and 4 x 200) before returning to this, when you could either stretch it to 6 x 3 on/3 off or keep it at 5 x but shorten the rest to 2:30.

Thanks for the reply,

This week is spring break for me so I can get plenty of quality workouts in this week and keep my rest very consistent so I can recover better. If there was ever a time for me to hammer some track workouts, this would be the week

If you’re trying to do two quality days this week, adding something fast w/ a fair amount of recovery would be a nice new stimulus to the system. Something like 2 x (4 x 200) with 200 easy recovery between reps and 3-5 minutes between sets. Start each set at mile pace, try to work down to 800m pace.

Nothing crazy, but it’s another one that’s easy to progress (it becomes 2 x (6 x 200m), then 2 x (4 x 300m), etc).

These aren’t base phase workouts, though—they’re more like pre-comp track workouts for someone racing 800m to 2 miles.