Stupidest Workout Ever? - 4x 1600m w/2:30 recovery - 4:52, 4:55, 4:55, 4:57

Maybe goal pace was 5:00 and she was purposefully slowing down to hit the split

This workout isn’t dumb. Probably more of a good test of her fitness given there’s no track seasons anywhere. 5 second spread is no big deal. Besides, she wore 4%’s in the workout...it doesn’t even count!

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

FightFor15 wrote:

Hey, LRC, can we stop starting threads to bash workouts run by HS girls? It's a wonder why everyone says this place has a problem with women.

The part that I find shocking is that 4x1600 @5k pace with 2:30 rest is considered a killer workout. I always thought those were pretty standard

I agree, a lot of LRC-ers might just be jealous they can't hit the same times. She was pretty consistent. Started a touch quick & then hit the same splits for the next two. This is a 15:30 workout. Looks like she could have threatened sub-9:40 2 mile, 9:00 3k. Dang.

Ever?

Someone does 4x1M hits them within 5 secs and its the worst ever? weird.

No bad coach has a high school girl able to run four sub 5 repeats in a workout. Bad coaches have girls running six or over in races. The direction of times was not optimal but this is a girl ready to go sub 10 for 2M.

I can remember doing a workout with something like 5:04/4:55/4:53 once on 4-5 minutes rest, a half mile jog, and I was probably ready to run 15:50 or better. 4xmile at sub 2M pace on 2:30 is a tough workout. Even 5k pace would be hard.

I'd call those consistent splits, and even then, working to depletion has its benefits. If she ran say, 4:52, 5:20 5:40 6:00, that would be another story.

zxvczxcv wrote:

No bad coach has a high school girl able to run four sub 5 repeats in a workout. Bad coaches have girls running six or over in races. The direction of times was not optimal but this is a girl ready to go sub 10 for 2M.

That's nonsense. Most coaches don't have their girls running multiple sub 5-min miles in training on a partially soft surface because they don't have such talented girls (top 0.01% or so).

Bad coaches in charge of super-talents frequently get them injured, and limit their room for further improvements if they overwork them in HS.

This workout is not a workout, it's a race. 4x1 Mile at around 3k pace is a race-like effort. If that was the goal, why not just run a TT and get a PR? Lots of people here say this workout signals sub 15:30 shape, why not run a 5k in 15:30 and get a similarly hard effort but with a new PR to show? Both would work the VO2MAX, but the difference on paper is a great race result instead of 4 somewhat fast miles.

It is a workout. Sorry to break it to you.

Just because it isn't a "Tinman" workout doesn't mean it was poorly written

a time trial isn't a race result.

and this workout is a workout.

a 15:30 5k time trial is both shorter and slower than what she did. so why is it better? Why don't we all just run time trials instead of workouts?

zxvczxcv wrote:

I can remember doing a workout with something like 5:04/4:55/4:53 once on 4-5 minutes rest, a half mile jog, and I was probably ready to run 15:50 or better. 4xmile at sub 2M pace on 2:30 is a tough workout. Even 5k pace would be hard.

The question is she a 10:00 2 miler or a 9:45 one. Yes 4x1600 at 2 mile pace (well assuming the course she was running was legit. We have all seen way to many screwed up road courses over the years) is insanely hard. At 5k pace? It is hard but doable. Type of thing you run every 2-3 weeks in the last 8 weeks before your big race.

Obviously we are left guessing about her actual shape. We have results froma 4:50/9:58 double at the end of February. Is she 15+ seconds faster now? Who knows.

Now for stupid workouts. Go look at Ritz high school training

AM = 7 miles

PM =

Warm-up = 3 miles

10 min stairs = 1.25 miles

32 x 400 in 66 with 400 jogs = 16 miles

8 x 50m = .25 miles

Cool down = 2 miles

Grand total = 29.5 miles

Granted that is a lot of rest for 400ms but does a 22 mile workout sound like a good idea? Running sprints after doing that. much volume?

What do Ritz and Brown have in common? Both were injured a lot, already in HS. How often was Drew Hunter injured in HS? Zero times.

HS kids shouldn't be pushing the limits constantly in workouts, in addition to many races (or TT's atm). It's playing with fire. Brown's threshold is probably around 5:25/mi based on her LR and interval session, why not just do the miles around threshold, like Jakob Ingebrigtsen did when he was young?

Ritz pushed volume in his workout, Brown intensity in long repeats. I'm not a fan of either, especially in a non-racing period where there is nothing to peak for. Brown's workout is like a "Michigan" - peaks you and gets you in shape, but should be used sparingly.

Right on!!!!! Good post

Oh who's injured now? Drew Hunter.

Yeah...I'm sure she has no interest in setting American 5k records if she can guarantee she'll stay healthy instead. Oh wait...Drew was just injured too .

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

What do Ritz and Brown have in common? Both were injured a lot, already in HS. How often was Drew Hunter injured in HS? Zero times.

HS kids shouldn't be pushing the limits constantly in workouts, in addition to many races (or TT's atm). It's playing with fire. Brown's threshold is probably around 5:25/mi based on her LR and interval session, why not just do the miles around threshold, like Jakob Ingebrigtsen did when he was young?

.

And how often has Drew Hunter been injuried since high school? Why did he switch from training that worked to stuff that just left him injured.

And obviously you don't do the miles at threshold pace because it doesn't give you the response you are looking for. Unless you see a good 16 week program, it is hard to say if a workout is right or not. Rarely are individual workouts an issue. It is always the sequence of them.

In the end this will all come down to if you believe she is a 9:40 runner today or a 10:00.

And does anyone else remember the days when we gave high schoolers a hard time for running 30mpw instead of actually training? Remember the stuff about our kids being thousands of miles behind at 18 and never being able to catch up? Now they train and we still give them crap.

ExPhys wrote:

Oh who's injured now? Drew Hunter.

He didn't get injured in HS. Elite training is different, you can't just play "safe" all time when you are trying to compete with the very best, he was pushing the borders.

This is a HS girl. She shouldn't train as hard as elites at this point, and the coaches should put even more emphasis on "ball rolling". Breaking HS 5k records? We saw how well that ended for Mary Cain.

I'd rather hope that Brown's coaches take a foot off the gas pedal, and build her up slowly, prepare her for college, and let the rest run its course. I'd rather have her represent the US at the Olympics, than shatter a HS record with ridiculous, elite-esque training and never be heard again soon after due to injuries, burnout, and inability to improve.

Sometimes HS kids should take one step back, to allow for even more improvement and ultimate potential down the line. Tuohy and Starliper, two other girls with lots of talent, did much more moderate workouts in their "Workout Wednesday"s. Nothing super impressive, just solid running. Their coaches understand that it's about the long term. I trained too hard myself in the past, if there is one thing I could change in my (short) running career, it's to take things slower and not always run super hard workouts week after week.

Ritz set the adult american 5k record. I'm not talking about high school. You can do worse for people to emulate.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

And obviously you don't do the miles at threshold pace because it doesn't give you the response you are looking for. Unless you see a good 16 week program, it is hard to say if a workout is right or not. Rarely are individual workouts an issue. It is always the sequence of them.

In the end this will all come down to if you believe she is a 9:40 runner today or a 10:00.

You are right, threshold would be something different. But there are other workouts to get VO2MAX in than 4 x Mile at VO2MAX with short rest. How about some 400s at 3k pace? Or 6x800 at 3k pace?

Here is Daniel's definition of VO2MAX workouts:

Generally in the range of 95-100% of VO2max or 98-100% of HRmax. Intervals are "hard" but not all-out running by any means. Usually at a pace that you could maintain for about 10-15 minutes in a serious race. Intervals are best if they involve runs of 3 to 5 minutes each (800m and 1000m workbouts are typical), with jog recoveries of similar duration (not necessarily, equal distance); relative to the runs they follow.

So even by his definition, she should have done a 5 min jog recovery. 2.5 min recovery just made it even harder. She essentially used the same jog recovery that would be used for 800m VO2MAX reps (in ~2:30/800, with equal recovery).

Very impressive workout indeed, and we can see she was still highly aerobic during it. It's just the overall training (15 mile LR at 6:11/mi pace, hard hill workout 6 days ago, etc.) that seems to be very intense. If this is a "once-a-month" thing, sure but it seems like her coaches are pushing her repeatedly in a number of different workouts and even long runs. I'm just a bit worried that it's not going to be sustainable in the long term, especially given her injury history.