5x60m w/ full recovery

I appreciate the kind words Sasuke. I agree, mileage has irreplaceable benefits in many places but speed development is a pretty small investment that nets a great return. I really wish it was a part of my own training back in the day, or at least a bigger part.

I appreciate the kind words Sasuke. I agree, mileage has irreplaceable benefits in many places but speed development is a pretty small investment that nets a great return. I really wish it was a part of my own training back in the day, or at least a bigger part.

V,

If you don't mind me asking, what level do you coach at?

How does speed Dev look for 10k runners vs 1500 runners? What's different?

Horizon wrote:

V,

If you don't mind me asking, what level do you coach at?

How does speed Dev look for 10k runners vs 1500 runners? What's different?

I don't mind at all, I am fortunate enough to be coaching at the Division 1 level.

Overall it looks the same when we're talking about Speed Development. Some of the other types of "Speed Work" (a term that I really hate because of how loosely its used. Typically people refer to anything faster than race pace as "speed work" and that's just too unspecific) such as anaerobic capacity/power, speed endurance, or lactate tolerance may be expressed differently though. I'll break them down a bit now to explain what I mean.

Speed Development

This and acceleration development are the same for 1500m runners, 10k runners, and 60m runners. Granted sprinters do some additional little things that we don't the bulk of it is the same. The reason being is that the alactic (P-Cr) system is narrow and, according to many, static in its range. Alactic sprints last about 7 seconds and even people who believe that it can be extended never say it lasts longer than 8 so individual variance is small across pretty much everyone. Because of that we have to follow the rules that sprinters learned long ago.

We have to get to top speed to work on speed development right? that means we need to run for at least 40m for most people. But we also know that this alactic system is only viable for a max of 7 (maybe 8) seconds. This means we're limited to roughly 3 seconds of time at top speed. I have mentioned here a few times that 80m is the ceiling I use for reps, in reality most distance runners don't have the accelerative power or coordination to make true use of those last 10-15m. In fact 80m is the start of speed endurance which shifts to a new energy system. All that being said, 60m sprints are my bread and butter for speed development, but I like 80's because you "feel" them more. It is a great tool to start making your speed development more functional and reduce any real slowdown.

Speed Endurance

This is what falls after Speed Development in my eyes. The accepted range that I know of is between 80-150m and I agree with this enough to not argue it though the case can be made for 80-200m I suppose. Here we still use long recoveries and the speeds are done as fast as you can. These are the most demanding workouts in terms of coordination (sprinting is a skill as much as anything else in sport). I use volumes in the neighborhood of 800-1200m usually making 6-8x150m appropriate but honestly after 6 you're not likely to be running as smooth or reflexively. Again be very generous on recoveries, 3 minutes is too short, 4-8 minutes is fair and people often do more by breaking them up into sets.

As I mentioned these break into a different energy system called the anaerobic glycolytic system. This is the one that produces lactic acid.

[my next soap box talk, lactic acid is very misunderstood by a lot of people. Many articles will vilify it one week then say "oh wait its a fuel source" and be back on its good side. Here's what I think you should know: Lactic acid is the combination of Lactate and an acid (H+). Lactate triggers tons of beneficial hormones that help you recover (good) but is also a fairly large molecule that can eventualy take up too much space within a cell making enzymatic function less efficient (bad). Acid is what makes your legs burn (not always fun) and in high concentrations will inhibit aerobic development (bad). This happens from the acidity "burning" capillary beds which are meant to transport more oxygen to muscles, as well as being thought to cause muscle soreness. I've never actually seen any research on that specifically so I won't assert that part too hard. Anecdotally its not off base though. Acid also changes blood pH causing the problems we mentioned but also makes your cells operate in a less ideal climate to function. So those times when you feel burnt out, it may very well be due to you lowering your blood pH too far and going through what called, "acidosis." An important point however is that it will improve your buffering capacity, this means that your body tries to protect itself by producing buffers within your blood to better resist those pH changes so that, in a race, that burning doesn't make you slow down as much. All of these things pertain not just to speed endurance but to ANY kind of anaerobic effort. The reason we don't talk about it with 10k training is that the paces for a 10k are only slightly anaerobic (about 8%) so even a very hard effort you only have so much potential for high levels of acidity throughout the duration of the workout. End soap box]

So getting back to it, the levels of acidity produced are worth keeping an eye on here. We put in long recoveries so the overall buildup isn't massive but you should reserve speed endurance for later in the season when you have very solid speed established and likely have some anaerobic capacity under your belt. And this kind of work really fries your nervous system, use it when needed but not excessively.

Anaerobic Capacity/Power

Here is where murky water begins because coaches use this term for (sometimes) slightly different things. I'm going to tell you how I look at it and you can decide where it fits within things for you and your program. Anything with "capacity" in the name refers to volume in some respect. Base work for a distance runner for instance is fair to call Aerobic Capacity. I dislike the term power used here but I listed it because I've seen them used here interchangeably, but I will likely always refer to it as capacity.

In my eyes the difference between this and speed endurance is that with anaerobic capacity we aren't going flat-out. we are going fast but its more analogous to 400m-600m race pace. You are clearly going fast, but its somewhat more manageable (and by extension less neuromuscularly demanding). I tend to stay between 100-200m for my reps here but recovery is a bit less and you can do them more often. 12x100m with 300m jog recovery is one I use to transition speed development into more functional sprinting. But people have used 200's at the end of a session quite a lot as well.

I'll also note that some even view 1500m work as anaerobic capacity because it is a decent amount anaerobic and it does have high volume. It doesn't fit with the progression that I use so I would suggest always treating these as very different entities.

I do these workouts after speed development but before speed endurance. They teach you to run fast while building up a bit of acidity without going overboard. Plus the speeds are slightly less than speed endurance so it tends to be a good stepping stone that speed endurance workouts marry together.

Lactate Tolerance

These are the ones that really hit hard. The goal here is to sprint hard enough and long enough to build up lactic acid to really trigger your body to develop better buffering capacity. These are usually regarded as "peaking" workouts especially for distance runners. The very high levels of Acidity mean that doing this too often can cause pH drops that you don't bounce back from in time. Some coaches consider this the part where athletes get "stale" or peak too early. A couple of these workouts sharpen the knife just fine so don't go overboard especially as a long distance runner.

These workouts might be something like 3x500m with 3 minute recovery. Average as fast as you can over all 3 reps. This that are longer, still fast, and don't offer enough recovery to get the burning all the way out of your legs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's different?

We took the long way around the question but I think that stuff is important to understand on a general level before getting into the differences (plus I like talking shop).

Everything that I mentioned here I genuinely believe is appropriate across all of the distance events. But if George Orwell was a track coach he'd say that, across all events this is appropriate, but across the middle-distance events it is more appropriate. What I mean is that a 1500m runner would devote more time to this. I use a 10-12 day cycle and year round you are bound to see 2 of these per cycle, my 5k/10k guys probably only see 1 depending on the time of year. They need to know how to deal with lactic acid too, but for them its far more important to clear acidity (through lactate threshold) than it is to buffer acidity like we see in the shorter events.

Your specific endurance work will be a bigger factor here. Now you might decide to add something like anaerobic capacity to the end of a 10k workout to simulate having to run hard at the end of a race, that's totally appropriate if done at the right time of the season. But I suppose at the end of the day I'm not suggesting that they are very different, its just that for the 10k you need to budget your workout time appropriately to make sure that you're still getting in the aerobic work. This may be a very good time to make a morning workout something like a tempo and the evening session something with anaerobic capacity. Is it perfect? No, but we have schedules and deadlines so sometimes we have to play the hand dealt to us.

Sasuke wrote:

It could be a useful workout, but for a 1500m guy I'd do something like 3x5x60m with short rest (something like a walk back to the start) and a longer rest between the series. It could help because it would let you better your basic speed and so the times you run in every distance from 100m upwards. But if you don't run at least 400s I can't see the point of doing a workout that short (only 5 reps).

Please read up on the central nervous system response to this type of strenuous workout. If done properly this is very taxing.

The first problem is the OP is posting here before having a conversation with his coach. Trust and communication go a long way.

V wrote:

Yes I would devote a full day to this, and the last part of your question is the way I would do it. These days, while intense, are very easy to work into a schedule. I nearly always place these the day before a workout (usually a longer workout like a tempo, VO2max, Long Run, etc.) because the energy systems are sufficiently different and the only next day effects are usually soreness. A very basic 7 day outline in your base phase might look something like this:

Monday- VO2max

Tuesday- aerobic run (mileage)

Wednesday- Speed Development

Thursday- Lactate Threshold

Friday- aerobic run (mileage)

Saturday- Long run

Sunday- off

(I don't think 7 days is enough to fit everything in so the runner that you mentioned training 6 days a week should lengthen their cycle to accommodate everything, but that's a different soap box)

Great, great posts again. Your schedule is almost exactly what I used, only the days are different and I liked to do the VO2max-type workout in the saturday, before the sunday´s long run. The ~LT-intensity is easy to reach the day after the top-end speed work, and since the muscle stiffness reaches it´s peak about 2 days after the sprints, it´s ideal to place a workout near LT-intensity the day after the sprints. And the speed day done 4-5 days before a high-end endurance workout prepares you optimally for the workout.

More posts like this will MRLGA

#MLRGA

It's not just doing this session that improves top end speed. It's the stuff you need to do to be able to do this fast, eg:

- gym - cleans, squats, deadlifts, hamsring work, hip flexor strength and flexibility

- short hills, resistance like sleds and rope

- plyos like speed bounding

- less so, other agility exercises like skipping

Do these and you can do a decent 5 x 60 session.

And I fully agree that true speed development is too often neglected by middle and even longer distance runners.

You´re right, strength work is important also for speed development. One leg exercises are very good too, you have to use lots of different muscles to stay in balance, including the core. I lifted right after the sprints.

The term "speed bounding" is a good one; runners benefit more from faster (cyclic), horizontal bounding vs. vertical (aiming higher).

As long as I got the acronym right, thank you. I appreciate it. Definitely been good to get people's thoughts on how pure speed can/should be used in training

Karma Police wrote:

It's not just doing this session that improves top end speed. It's the stuff you need to do to be able to do this fast, eg:

- gym - cleans, squats, deadlifts, hamsring work, hip flexor strength and flexibility

- short hills, resistance like sleds and rope

- plyos like speed bounding

- less so, other agility exercises like skipping

Do these and you can do a decent 5 x 60 session.

And I fully agree that true speed development is too often neglected by middle and even longer distance runners.

You're definitely right on all of that. We always try to include lifting, plyometrics, and/or multithrows on our speed/power days to make sure we get the most out of our day.

I'm curious how sled pulls have worked for you. I haven't had my athletes do them yet but have toyed with the idea in recent weeks. What weight and distance have you had success with? Are you reserving this for your more developed (more powerful) runners or have you introduced this with younger training ages as well?

For the division I coach at, I've had a decent amount of success with middle distance runners. Over the winter, we will begin to incorporate short hill sprint work (6 x 8 seconds with walk down recover), move to 3 x flying 60s early winter and eventually to 6 x flying 30s during the spring. We do this 1x per week during the entire track season up until the last 3 weeks and it is always followed with a normal distance run and the day after a harder effort. My mid-distance are also typically our top 400 runners on our team. Most importantly, I want them to be able to tap into a higher gear when the time comes to move their body faster than their competitors. This is an easy way to compliment any strength-based 800/1500 plan.

Sasuke wrote:

It could be a useful workout, but for a 1500m guy I'd do something like 3x5x60m with short rest (something like a walk back to the start) and a longer rest between the series. It could help because it would let you better your basic speed and so the times you run in every distance from 100m upwards. But if you don't run at least 400s I can't see the point of doing a workout that short (only 5 reps).

Yeah, I agree. One of my hardest workouts ever was 20x100m all-out, starting every 30 seconds. I couldn't see straight for ten minutes after that.

Bumping to put this excellent thread above all the political drivel (at least for a while)

@ "V"

Just wanted to say that I bookmarked this thread because of your incredible posts.

I'm a mid distance runner, 22 years old and am starting the difficult journey of training on my own. My senior year of college I ended up doing a lot of speed development and some of the speed endurance work by coincidence. I would just go to the track after a majority of my easy runs during late fall/early winter and do 100m strides, starting slow and building to top end speed by the last 30m. Occasionally I would spike up and just blast 5x100m with decent rest because I wanted some extra speed in preparation for the mile for indoor.

I didn't really have any structure, but along with lifting and the sprint work I was doing I dropped my 400m (split) from 53.5 to 49.9 in one year and eventually my 800m from 2:02 to 1:52 and I think the makeshift "speed development" strides I was doing helped tremendously. I am currently taking a break before I start building base for track season, but I look forward to using some of the stuff you listed here for my training. Hopefully having structure will help me a lot, along with being more diverse with plyos and lifting.

Hope to see more from you, and this was extremely refreshing amidst most of the boring political posts on here this past week.

That's a very impressive progression you made in the 800m. Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you found some of this useful. Hopefully you'll find yourself on the friendly side of 1:50 in the near future.

I try to keep the threads that I follow to a minimum so I'll do my best to keep up with this one. Best of luck going forward.

SWAZ wrote:

Yeah, I agree. One of my hardest workouts ever was 20x100m all-out, starting every 30 seconds. I couldn't see straight for ten minutes after that.

That does sound like a tough workout that probably falls somewhere between speed endurance and lactate tolerance. I don't think it would do much to develop "pure speed" since you probably only hit your true top speed for about 5-6 seconds during that workout (3 seconds on the first rep, 1-2 seconds on the second rep, and maybe a second the third rep).

That being said it gives you a lot of volume at some very high speeds while incurring a lot of lactic acid so I'm sure it has its place somewhere, probably around 4 weeks or so left in the season.

My one word of caution that CWPR and I think myself and U.N.O mentioned be careful trying to run very high (over 600m) volume at flat-out paces. First, by the end of the workout you probably aren't actually achieving top speed anymore even if it feels like you are. But more importantly these can fry your central nervous system (CNS). When your legs feel unresponsive but they don't "burn" like when you have a ton of acidity, I usually attribute this to having some level of Neural fatigue. Occasionally you might see it in someone who simply lacks the basic speed characteristics to get to that next gear, but for people that normally have good speed (especially finishing speed) having an unresponsive feeling is probably less metabolic than neural.

It can also be a pain to resolve. When you go through acidosis (blood pH being chronically lowered below ideal levels) some rest or running at very easy paces for a few days usually does the track. For people that I've seen exhibit the qualities of CNS fatigue it can last a long time before it resets itself. I hope others will comment if they've seen the same thing or not but it seems to have a big range of lasting effect (a few days for some, practically a season for others). All of that being said, with just a little discretion and patience it is, all things considered, a rare problem to have and pretty easy to avoid.

I love seeing a great thread about max speed work on letsrun.

I'm certainly not a D1 coach like V and I certainly didn't run D1 but here is how I try and develop max speed at the HS I coach.

I believe sprinting has two components.

1. Being strong and reactive enough to apply force quickly to the ground.

2. Having the neuromuscular coordination to apply this force in a manner that maximally accelerates the body.

or in fewer words

1. Get Stronger

2. Technique

As far as strength work we do what should be a pretty standard starting with bodyweight work for beginners, then progressing to things like goblet squats & teach them to hip hinge, then barbell squats, lunges & deadlifts and finally olympic lifts. Plus we do jumping and throwing too.

Also do the pretty standard periodization moving from strength to more explosive work.

For sprint training the most important thing is having a coach to individually cue kids and give them something to focus on every rep. You sprint faster by getting better at the skill of sprinting not by trying harder.

I got this idea from throwers using heavier implements to work on technique, I really like using hills to teach new runners how to sprint because it slows down the ground contact and allows them to feel out the proper movement more. Grass also slows down ground contact but the feeling through the ground isn't the same and on a track things are happening to fast for a gangly 14 year old to feel how his body is moving.

I've been classifying my sprint workouts differently than V, but it looks like we are doing similar things.

I start out with 50-75m hill sprints

I then add flat sprint workouts starting with 50m, then adding in 75s, and finally 100s. I simultaneously start using ~400 pace hill workouts going from 8-10x100m to 2-3x250m in length.

Lastly, for mid-distance track runners I will use 400 pace track workouts working from say 8x100m up to 2x250m, or maybe 1x300m "event run" in a clyde hart fashion for an advanced 800m runner.

The 400m pace workouts are great for seeing how a runners form breaks down, which you can then go back and reinforce correct technique in the shorter sprint workouts.

I've also experimented with only using hill sprints during XC.

From looking at V, it seems that my 100m short sprint workouts are actually working on speed endurance, but if we are giving them to our runners in the same place in a progression between short top speed sprints and longer 400m paced sprints then I guess it doesn't really matter what we call them.

Here are some sample weekly cycles for how I structure speed work for different events. Just a heads up, I'm a big fan of using the spectrum between just easy and hard days.

800

M: Sprint workout

T: Easy aerobic

W: Traditional workout

Th: easy aerobic

F: Sprint workout

S: Race or Traditional workout

1600

M: Alternate sprint workout w/ endurance workout (long run, cruise run, easy fartlek, etc)

T: Easy aerobic

W: Traditional workout

Th: easy aerobic

F: Easier sprint workout

S: Race or Traditional workout

3200

M: Alternate long run w/ medium long run including easy endurance work

T: Easy aerobic

W: Traditional workout

Th: easy aerobic

F: sprint workout

S: Race or Traditional workout

5k XC

3200

M: Alternate long run w/ long run including easy endurance work

T: Easy aerobic

W: Traditional workout

Th: easy aerobic

F: sprint workout

S: Race or Traditional workout

V wrote:

That's a very impressive progression you made in the 800m. Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you found some of this useful. Hopefully you'll find yourself on the friendly side of 1:50 in the near future.

I try to keep the threads that I follow to a minimum so I'll do my best to keep up with this one. Best of luck going forward.

Thank you for your incredible posts, coach. I have a question for you. I was a 400/800 runner in high school, and I still recall a particular workout we did a couple of times the purpose of which I can't put my fingers on: 60/100/200/400/300/150, with around 5 minutes rest in between. It seemed like a strange ladder to me. What do you make of it? Thanks again.