I'd also add that if you're training for 10K and half marathon distances, just do straight threshold work (tried-and-true tempo runs, 4-5 x 1-mile (1:00 jog/rest), 20 min + 10 min + 5 min + 5 min when built up to it, etc.). No reason to get cute with throwing T at the end of economy or max work.
I can recall Steve Magness talking about this; I think he referred to it as a "flush".
The reasoning seemed to be that this would better rid the legs of lactate than just a standard plodding cool down, and so recovery time would be reduced to the next workout.
I don't know if it's backed by empirical evidence, but it could be.
You can argue this a bunch of ways. if you have that much energy left, do some more fast stuff. Do 10 instead of 8. Or you can go running somewhat fast with high blood lactic is going stimulate the body to get better at running at around race paces.
I am not sure we understand what drives adaptation well enough to say what is best. But if it works go for it…
I think another intention of the T mile at the end of the workout is to keep the athletes in check to some degree on the final rep of the primary portion of the workout. May help them avoid going completely to the well and overcooking it if they know they have another quality mile left in the workout afterwards.
Tom Heinonen was incorporating these into the end of workouts at Oregon decades ago, and I’m sure he didn’t invent them either.
I remember this came up on the Coffee Club podcast when two of the NAU guys were guests. The thing is, that last threshold mile us run at something like real threshold pace, which is usually slower than most amateurs think of as their threshold pace.
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
I can recall Steve Magness talking about this; I think he referred to it as a "flush".
The reasoning seemed to be that this would better rid the legs of lactate than just a standard plodding cool down, and so recovery time would be reduced to the next workout.
I don't know if it's backed by empirical evidence, but it could be.
You can argue this a bunch of ways. if you have that much energy left, do some more fast stuff. Do 10 instead of 8. Or you can go running somewhat fast with high blood lactic is going stimulate the body to get better at running at around race paces.
I am not sure we understand what drives adaptation well enough to say what is best. But if it works go for it…
I agree that it's not well understood (it seems they recognize that it's not grounded in research).
But I'd hope very few people would look at this and compare it to: 'use up all your energy doing fast stuff instead'. That might be the assignment on some training days, but it is the exact opposite of what is happening here, it's not comparable.
Rather than choose how best to deplete their resources to zero, the idea here is that they have gotten the hard stimulus from the workout and the mile @ T actively, for these athletes, takes barely anything from them and may actively enhance their ability to train in the following days and weeks.
I am just always wary of trying to apply the training of elite athletes to the general population, and most HS athletes.
While there is always value in reading about the training the top level athlete are doing, we often do not take into account everything else that went into them being able to do that type of work i.e. big huge base, supreme god given talent.
Taking the workouts from the best college athletes in the nation and then applying that to random HS kids is misguided.
I’m training for a 10k and a half marathon right now and early on I’m doing smaller sessions like 12x300@5k just for leg turn over, do you think a mile at threshold ish afterwards would be useful?
For a workout like this, I like to do a 400m at tempo in my warmup (after jogging and mobility), and a 1600 at tempo in cooldown (before light jogging and a stretch).
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