5x60m w/ full recovery

Question for V Coach! wrote:

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.

I agree with what U.N.O. said about what kind of elements it hits (alactic, glycolytic, and what I call lactate tolerance I think he calls power but I'm pretty sure we're thinking about the same thing).

Personally, I'm not a big fan of mixing paces to that degree for athletes who have hit a certain level of ability. They work great with beginners because it exposes you to a lot of different things without being overwhelming. I had a high school coach that I consider to be one of the best beginner coaches out there but I wouldn't consider him much more than average once you got down to 4:40 or faster in the mile.

if we break down the workout its something like this:

60: Alactic (speed dev)

100: Speed endurance

200: Speed endurance/glycolytic

400: Lactate tolerance

300: Lactate tolerance

150: Lactate tolerance (normally this one falls under speed endurance based on the distance, but you've probably incurred too much acidity to get the power output needed to be true speed endurance, but its not totally off the mark considering the longer recoveries).

The reason I don't mix paces often is because, as a high level athlete, the only way to improve a system is to stress it enough to force it to adapt. So a workout that works a lot of different areas isn't as likely (in my eyes) to be able to stress any single part of your fitness enough to cause a change. When I do decide to mix paces its usually as maintenance. So I might lead a workout with a 2 mile tempo on the track and then follow it with mile work, but the tempo is only there to keep that area from degrading assuming I don't have any lactate threshold work in that are of the schedule. The mile paced part now has to be lowered in volume to accommodate the tempo so to provide enough stress with the lower volume we need to use longer reps. But understand that I'm not getting as much out of my tempo or out of my mile work by doing this so its very situational.

To get back to your workout more specifically I think its potentially a very good one for a 400m runner late in the season. The 60m rep is the only one that I see being out of place. if you lead off with either 100m+120m or 2x120m before going into the 200m rep I think it would be a good way to get in a solid amount of speed endurance then make you really have to work on tired legs for the 400 and 300 then let you try to get back to higher quality work on the last 150m to try to maintain form while fighting a sizable amount of neural and metabolic fatigue. You might need 2 easier days after this (depending on the actual paces) just to avoid digging yourself into a hole before starting the next hard session; I'm imagining this to be a later season workout where recovery is at a premium either way.

I will say that sometimes these mixed system workouts can do wonders to smooth over problem areas in runners. We've all met the guy who can run a great 400m and 1600m but fail to do anything comparable in the 800m. A lack of specificity in doing 800m workouts can certainly be to blame, but other times just giving them a workout where they can go through all of their gears while being a bit tired can sand those edges down for them.

Generic High School Coach,

You have some good stuff here. I really like that you use hills to start out, we do the same here. It forces runners into acceleration mechanics and lets distance runners learn to "push" or "drive" which seems to escape them once they're on a flat track. The hardest thing I remember doing was trying to teach some of my high school teammates how to progress from a dead start in a 40m sprint. Even in a standing/crouch or rollover start they always feel the need to stand up immediately and try "pulling" their way through it or over correct and be hunched over the whole time in their attempt to "stay low."

I mentioned it earlier that Irv Ray and Tony Benson use 10x100m with 300m recovery a lot, they do that at a pseudo 400m pace (they use the goal pace of your fastest 100m split in a 400m race) and I've seen that work well for programs. I use that workout for my athletes as a bridge away from speed development but before speed endurance (the recovery jog while slow is just fast enough and has just enough activity that its probably just a touch off of the speeds they'd see with a longer recovery, plus they do a rolling start so its less explosive). I consider it to be anaerobic capacity since we're not going flat out but we're beginning to get them introduced to reps that expose them to acidity at high speeds.

The high school system is very hard to stray from 7 day training weeks so its hard to fit in everything in while still doing speed development, but it might be worth finding a place for it even if its just every other week. For the outline you had for a 3200m runner something like 2 sets 4x50m can fit pretty easily on Tuesday. Its such a unique energy system that as long as you aren't going to the well the day before or doing something with 400m pace or faster the day before or after its usually safe to do.

V,

Thanks for the fantastic information, great stuff.

If you'd be willing to shoot me an email I'd would really appreciate the opportunity to pick your brain a little more about your system.

Horizon,

I'd be happy to, but I'll also encourage you to post your questions here. I'm a pretty open book with regards to training and there might be other people who find value in your questions as well.

I've been on letsrun for a while and never posted because things tend to devolve pretty quickly so good threads with people humbly sharing ideas (check out the sub-1:50 800m threads for a great example) are the only reason I decided to try posting here. Right now our sport is in an odd state where so much information is out there about how to create good training plans but you have to dig very far past a lot of the "common knowledge" that's largely misapplied to get to the things that really form good training.

That's being said, I don't have all of the answers and I hope I'm able to keep learning and right now letsrun, has some of the best reach for information.

V,

Could you touch more on how you use an alternate micro cycle and how you set it up?

If you use a cycle longer than 7 days, for the 5k/10k guys are you still hitting a long run every week or is it more spread out?

Horizon wrote:

V,

Could you touch more on how you use an alternate micro cycle and how you set it up?

If you use a cycle longer than 7 days, for the 5k/10k guys are you still hitting a long run every week or is it more spread out?

I look at things in terms of Micro and Macro cycles in addition to season/phase and year. My micro cycles are normally 10 days for cross and 12 days in track. Technically I should probably use 10 day cycles for my long distance runners year round but I know that along the lines I'll lose track of one of those groups and how they're periodized (my athletes are primarily middle-distance either way).

So I'll start with my set-up and put it in relation to longer distance runners since it seems like that's your main interest.

1- Speed Development

2- Lactate Threshold

3- Mileage

4- 5k pace work

5- Mileage

6- Hills

7- VO2max

8- Mileage

9- Long Run

10- off

I'll also note that I'm probably going to shift this to 12 days next year and use a floating workout day that will change depending on the emphasis of the cycle but I'd like to have a second threshold day that hits a bit longer and slower; closer to what we normally think as a steady state run.

As far as how do I alternate micro cycles, I think I alternate macro cycles more than micro cycles. Generally I believe that it takes about 28 days to get the most out of something without wasting additional time on it. So for me 3 micro cycles is equivalent to 1 macro cycle for the bulk of our season.

Normally what I do is try to frame workouts within a macro cycle to fit some kind of theme. For example, here is a progression for lactate threshold that changes slightly between micro cycles and more severely between macro cycles

July (introduction to tempos)

1: 2x2 mile tempo at 5:30

2: 3 mile temp at 5:30 + 1 mile tempo at 5:30

3: 4 mile tempo at 5:30

August (longer steady state runs)

1: 6 mile steady state at 5:45

2: 7 mile steady state at 5:45-50

3: 8 mile steady state at 5:45-50

September (8k specific tempos)

1: 5 mile tempo at 5:30

2: 3 mile tempo at 5:30 + 2 mile tempo at 5:20

3: 5 mile tempo at 5:30,5:30, 5:25, 5:25, 5:20

October (sharpening while incorporating tempos)

1: 3x2 mile tempo at 5:30, 5:20, 5:10

2: 1 mile at 5:00 + 3 mile tempo at 5:20 + 1 mile at 5:00

3: Conference meet

In that example I might make June (not shown) and August harder months for VO2max work to offset the lack of threshold (June) or the slower threshold (August). But the main point is that each month things are familiar within it but distinct between them. This might be something you see for a younger college athlete who needs to be able to handle 8k but might not be quite strong enough to handle 6 mile tempos at more challenging paces (or a 5k runner who doesn't do the 10k).

As I mentioned near the top of this post if I switch to a 12 day schedule then to really emphasize something within a macro cycle I might make it appear twice in a few of the micro cycles (you might see 4-6 of one type of workout instead of the my normal 3), I do this more frequently when I start speed development during cross for my middle distance runners. They'll have one day that is spent on speed development and one day that's spent on acceleration development (nearly always using hills when I put two within a micro cycle).

Then before I forget to answer your last question, we don't do a long run every week. I'm sure there will be a ton of coaches who will never be able to get over the idea of not doing a weekly long run but we only think that we need something every week is simply because a week exists. Most coaches I know tend to think that it takes about 8-11 days to "absorb" a workout (I'm not saying that they are right or that I even agree with them) but those same coaches also don't understand why we shouldn't put so much merit on 7 day training weeks. Don't get me wrong, 7 days is much more straight forward and long runs have a ton of merit... but the difference between running 70 miles a week with a 14 mile long run and running 100 miles over 10 days with a 14 mile long run is pretty small. We have workouts that hit 12 miles very easily when you include our warm-up and cool-down, I don't think those last 2 miles are forgotten for long in their legs.

Can this be done more than once a week or is that too much? I really need to work on my baseline speed.

Outstanding thread. I'm glad it got bumped. I see a lot of training but not a lot of racing. I'm curious how this might work for:A. College distance runners (track). B. HS XC that races weekly. C. HS Track with dual meet & invitational weekly. HS track schedule has a lot of racing. Often dictated by the league or head coach. How would you deal with a track season with 1-2 races on a weekly basis March through May?

CWRP wrote:

Outstanding thread. I'm glad it got bumped.

I see a lot of training but not a lot of racing. I'm curious how this might work for:

A. College distance runners (track).

B. HS XC that races weekly.

C. HS Track with dual meet & invitational weekly.

HS track schedule has a lot of racing. Often dictated by the league or head coach. How would you deal with a track season with 1-2 races on a weekly basis March through May?

First off, without scouring through the thread to see exactly what V said, the basic types of workouts described here are going to be of max benefit in your base/pre-competition phases, IMO. Once you get to competition season, these types of workouts will probably get squeezed to the back burner and only find there way into a macrocycle sufficient for basic maintenance (with the possible exception of your speed-based 800m types).

For a College distance runner, they're competing at most once a week and even then, until late in the season probably only every other meet (at most) will be an emphasis on outright race performance.

In early competition season where they are probably still getting quality Tempo/LT sessions in, these types of workouts are great to do the day before Tempo/LT.

An example of an intentionally tough early competition phase week could be

Monday: 7 x 50m full speed sprints

Tuesday: 25 Minute Tempo

Wednesday: Easy run for XXX

Thursday: Workout around 3k-5k race pace or 800-mile pace

Friday: Easy run for XXX

Saturday: low-priority race at the distance they didn't work Thursday

Sunday: Easy run for XXX

Personally, I'd avoid doing one of these hard sprint workouts late in the week (thursday or later with a Saturday competition) since their nervous system is going to be fried for a couple days (especially if you're coupling the sprints workout with challenging lifts after, which I'd advocate), which is in my opinion more harmful to race with than tired legs from a hard VO2 max type workout.

Weekly XC meets in College or HS wouldn't be that different from the above's general outline for a 'hard' week. An example follow-up week to the above week might be (assume they did a 1500 workout on the above, and raced a 5k XC race):

Monday: 20-25 Minute Tempo

Tuesday: Easy run for XXX

Wednesday: 8 x 80m uphill sprints

Thursday: Easy run for XXX or Rest

Friday: Rest or Easy Run for XXX

Saturday: Higher priority XC race (higher priority for early in the season, that is)

Sunday: Easy run for XXX

You'd have to essentially write out a whole macro-cycle to properly show how competitions fit into training, if you're using 10 or 12 day micro-cycles, so I'm just going with a pair of 7-day cycles, though I do prefer 10-day micros as well.

For multiple meets in a single week for HS Track... there are simply too many variables to lay out a specific schedule. The important thing to keep in mind both in that and everywhere else is that races are training stimulus. I see a lot of HS coaches who ignore this and wind up week in and week out having their kids do a workout at mile pace, then race the mile on the weekend, meaning at best they are going to get 1 other workout in a different stimulus range on a given week. Ultimately a HS coach with multiple meets every week is probably going to have to make tough decisions on early season wins/losses vs championship season, and long term athlete development.

Speedless wrote:

Can this be done more than once a week or is that too much? I really need to work on my baseline speed.

The most that I would do this is 2 times in a 10 day cycle. I don't doubt that it can be done more often for brief periods of time but I would worry a bit about CNS fatigue because of the high neuromuscular demand. A lot of the time this kind of work is so foreign to distance runners that even once a week is plenty. Odds are you have enough other days that are still important enough that you don't want to divert that much time to this area of fitness.

If you do decide to double up I would do it after they have some speed established and pair a speed development day (50m-60m) with an acceleration day using hills (40-60m). It at least changes it up so that the stimulus isn't identical but the benefits are still there.

[quote]CWRP wrote:

Outstanding thread. I'm glad it got bumped.

I see a lot of training but not a lot of racing. I'm curious how this might work for:

A. College distance runners (track).

B. HS XC that races weekly.

C. HS Track with dual meet & invitational weekly.

HS track schedule has a lot of racing. Often dictated by the league or head coach. How would you deal with a track season with 1-2 races on a weekly basis March through May?

CWRP,

You got some great stuff from Some Advice. I'll touch on these each a bit and if I don't fully answer what you're looking for let me know.

A. For college runners I simply use a longer cycle. 7 days isn't enough to fit in everything that I think they need. My 12 day cycle usually has 6-7 days that a lot of coaches consider workouts (depending on your thoughts for long runs) so 7 day cycles either means I leave off half my workouts that I thought were valuable or I don't do each workout each cycle. If I were a HS coach I might push my microcycles to 14 days just to make my life easier and shift the emphasis of one micro to another by adding one of the same type of workouts twice (i.e. 2 VO2max workouts in 14 days and then 2 Lactate threshold workouts in another micro). But the simple answer is I changed the format to make it all work.

B. Read what I have for C since I think it explains what I really think about dual/tri meets. But weekly races are fine, just make sure that its actually weekly races and not weekly meets that have 3 races on one day, that's way too much. In track you can substitute out workouts for races in a lot of cases. We do 1600m pace work for my college team but when a race goes on (assuming its a 1500m) then that week we just don't do 1600m pacing. A 3200m is a fantastic substitute for your VO2max days, and I'm okay with using the 800m or the 400m (or an 800m4x400m double) as a substitute for a lactate tolerance workout since those come in a lot of flavors as it is. The shift to 10-14 day training cycles (12 is my preferred) look annoying to write, but it makes fitting in these components much easier. Your kids will just wonder why you stopped doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday workouts and now have some system that seems pattern-less to them, that's fine.

C. This is a tough one. We used to race twice a week at my high school and it was rough. I had a slightly paranoid coach who always wanted to make sure we had the points to win a meet; my body never forgave me.

If you are doing dual/tri meets as one of those races then unless those meets matter for your championship I'd honestly treat them as JV meets. Some leagues use seasonal standings but mine was a county/league meet that decided who was the champion. Bragging rights and giving kinds a venue to race is great but if the only meet that matter to get the big trophy is the last one then that's the only one my studs will be running. I'd go as far as to suggest calling up coaches within your league and seeing if you can set up good time trials within the meet to benefit your faster runners. If you have a guy who never has competition and can go 4:2X or faster then call up the coaches with the same story and let those guys at least get some experience running against each other.

If on the other hand your school doesn't want you going 0-9 in the regular season then you either need to limit the number of races by trying to sit someone out on occasion or turn the race into a workout. I was a sophomore in HS running 4:34 at the time and was in a dual meet against 4:5X runners. We had me run 65,75,65,75 in that race to get a workout for running 4:20 pace but within the race to get points. The last lap was probably slower, I did whatever minimum needed to get the win. I looked absurd doing it but I had the 800m and 3200m later that day... (keep it to one race per meet)

[Summary: unless your Athletics Director cares, take the loss in the dual meets knowing that you'll get better training and show people up at the county/league championship]

The moral of my story is that I don't like that people use 7 day plans, they are super convenient, but also less effective (my opinion)... and that I think dual meets are the worst thing to happen to track and field (at least when you have athletes with a bit of talent).

Someone asked before, what can be done after 5x60.

I call these sprints raw speed, if are done at 100% speed.

Once in 5-7 weeks I have such sprints in my training, followed by a tempo.

Everytime, invariably, the quads and glutes are very tense during the tempo. I never been seriously injured (no more than 2-3 days rest days needed, once in two years maybe), but I guarantee that someone who's injury prone is at risk if is doing tempo or longer intervals after such sprints.

So I would recommend either easy run, or if it is in program, 200-400m intervals.

Maybe you should sprint more frequently?

George Ilie wrote:

Someone asked before, what can be done after 5x60.

I call these sprints raw speed, if are done at 100% speed.

Once in 5-7 weeks I have such sprints in my training, followed by a tempo.

Everytime, invariably, the quads and glutes are very tense during the tempo. I never been seriously injured (no more than 2-3 days rest days needed, once in two years maybe), but I guarantee that someone who's injury prone is at risk if is doing tempo or longer intervals after such sprints.

So I would recommend either easy run, or if it is in program, 200-400m intervals.

U.N.O. wrote:

Maybe you should sprint more frequently?

To George's point, I very rarely combine short, full-speed sprints with another session, but it does happen a few times a season as we approach a final taper. In these situations, I'm typically reducing the volume to where it only serves as a maintenance tool. So what in pre-season might have been a 7 x 60m workout and then the next day a 25-30 minute tempo run, gets reduced and pushed together as 4-5 x 60m followed by a 15 minute tempo run.

I also find that many athletes do struggle with quality efforts (tempo/VO2 paces/etc) after these hard sprint sessions. Consistently working these types of workouts helps quite a bit in their recovery, but I've adjusted to where I have everyone take a couple minute break after the sprints, then do a very easy 5 minute jog before going into another phase of the workout. I am admittedly making up the reasoning, but it seems like the 5 minutes of jogging helps 'settle' people's nervous systems and get their legs comfortable with submaximal efforts again. Normally the indicator a coach goes by for rest, even between combination workout sessions is cardiovascular recovery, but I find that isn't appropriate in this situation.

This in part gets at an interesting point. At what point does not working at a given stimulus lead to regression in performance (both overall but more in relation to their capacity to work that stimulus)? For complete non-running, my experience has been after 7-10 days, no matter how well they do cross-training, they will need more than just a few days of running to be back where they were. The more nuanced side of this is with the removal of a singular training stimulus. If an athlete goes 7 days without work at LT, has their capacity to run at LT paces been reduced? I think most would agree no. But up that to 14 days without LT work? quite possibly. The paradigm I've worked under the last few years has been that 14ish day window; if they haven't done work at a given stimulus in over 2 weeks, I assume they aren't going to be able to handle as high quality a workout the next time they do it (whether through reduced volume or increased rest).

Obviously there can be a lot of nuance to this, as there is quite a bit of overlap in many workout types. If for example an athlete hasn't worked Lactate tolerance (300-600m reps at 800m or faster paces on long rest) in several weeks, I wouldn't necessarily assume regression in this capacity if we've been doing speed endurance work (100-250m reps at 400-800m pace with incomplete rest) in that same time period. I'm curious about other coaches opinions on the last two paragraphs, its not something I've come across much in literature and gotten a good answer to at clinics/conventions/panels.

Just make it 10 x 60m and I agree! Five at 60m is kind of weak.

I think you're raising a great point here. Detraining is something that needs to be considered in these long cycles but I think there is a little more play in it than people often times think. I draw a lot of my training philosophy from Scott Christensen and his 12 day cycle

(good resources to get the training straight from the source:

)

He suggests that every 4 days middle distance runners need a hard aerobic stimulus (Long run, VO2max, Lactate threshold (LT), steady state, etc.) and an anaerobic stimulus every 3 days (Speed Endurance, Special Endurance 1, Special endurance 2, etc. [I don't know if he considers alactic work in that group, personally I wouldn't during track but probably would if we were in our prep phases or in cross]). I think that's a solid rule for middle distance runners especially when they are in season.

You also have to consider that everything has some overlap in what energy systems that they hit. For instance if I have an athlete do VO2max they are definitely also doing some level of LT, its not maximized during that workout but the reps are long enough that you body is working on clearing acidity its just that it can't quite keep up while the rep is being run. So while we may have a Lactate threshold run on day 1 and a VO2max workout on day 6 we aren't going 12 full days without the body having to do some level of work clearing out lactic acid.

I know Scott doesn't use tempos much (if at all) in track, he just doesn't think they're fast enough for milers. So his repeat mile workouts with a short recovery aren't traditional LT sessions (they build up slightly more acidity than you can clear out by the end of the rep) but by the end of each recovery they can catch up and go back to the lactate profile seen during a tempo.

Can anyone help me with this workout?

I was out of shape coming off a 2 year lay off and I jumped in a friends workout. 6x 300m good speed, 100m fast jog, 100 hard speed. (total of 500m continuous) There was a 300m rest between each one. My legs burned and was spent the next couple of days.

Where in the season would this kind of work fall into?

Keep this thread going, it's one of the most informative and positive ones on this message board.

V:

What are the 400 and 800 times of the athletes you coach?