Intervals on easy days and continuous running on hard days

What are your interval workouts? What are running on your continuous days?

Isn't this just the Gallowalk method?

I am jogging between them and not walking, but I keep my hearth rate low

Interval workouts are the same as people for ordinary training, but I measure it in time and hearth rate and not distance or speed. I try not to go above z2.

My workouts are 20 min tempo, 40 min tempo, 30 min hill and cruise intervals. Not measured the warm up or cool down. Sometimes I add 20 min tempo into long run

FinnJ wrote:

Interval workouts are the same as people for ordinary training, but I measure it in time and hearth rate and not distance or speed. I try not to go above z2.

My workouts are 20 min tempo, 40 min tempo, 30 min hill and cruise intervals. Not measured the warm up or cool down. Sometimes I add 20 min tempo into long run

Since you're not going above zone 2 HR on your 'interval' days, they are just a peculiar form of doing an easy run. I doubt there's anything particularly wrong with doing an easy day this way, but that's all it is (an easy day).

So the question is, do you accomplish enough harder training on your continuous days. My guess is you would benefit by mixing in some shorter, faster intervals.

It's not ideal because the changing of gears, even at easy efforts, adds extra stress. So the effort feels but you're not really recovering enough,

Runner10287 wrote:

It's not ideal because the changing of gears, even at easy efforts, adds extra stress. So the effort feels but you're not really recovering enough,

Going from level 2 to something slower isn't really 'changing gears'. It's just going from easy to very easy and back.

It works.

On easy days days I do intervals of 12X fast 400s with 2 min rest.

On hard days I run 40 minutes at 8-9 minute pace.

FinnJ wrote:

Anyone here tried to do intervals on easy days and continuous running on hard days? I try it for fun now and still see normal improvements.

The cons I can see is less time close to LT and worse economy if competing in short distances, but I find it easier to get in more mileage

I'm not sure I understand the question... easy/non-recovery days I'm throwing some strides in the middle of the run but never really stopping (i.e. continuous running). On hard days, I'm running various workouts, but even on interval days I'm doing jog recoveries (i.e. continuous running). Unless you're a sprinter or trying to work on fast twitch speed, I think you'd be fine doing continuous running on hard days. I must be missing something...

just stating the obvious here wrote:

Runner10287 wrote:

It's not ideal because the changing of gears, even at easy efforts, adds extra stress. So the effort feels but you're not really recovering enough,

Going from level 2 to something slower isn't really 'changing gears'. It's just going from easy to very easy and back.

What’s the point then? Guess it breaks up the monotony of an easy run.

Runner10287 wrote:

just stating the obvious here wrote:

Going from level 2 to something slower isn't really 'changing gears'. It's just going from easy to very easy and back.

What’s the point then? Guess it breaks up the monotony of an easy run.

Seems silly but harmless.

I'm guessing you are trying to get back in shape so every continuous run feels like a tempo run (especially in the summer in hot/humid weather)? So basically a little faster running in short reps. (I'm guessing) with easy, longer jogs between the reps to keep the overall heart rate down? As long as the faster reps. on the easy days aren't very long or super fast, this can be a reasonable strategy to get back in shape. Might have to walk instead of jog between faster reps. some days.

Good luck.

Antonio says Carlos Lopes used to do exactly that:

Let me get into a point that is often misunderstood. It has been remarked that Lopes could not change pace during races. That is not true.

On 26 June 1982 Carlos Lopes ran a European Record of 27:24.39 in Oslo, beating Fernando Mamede. During that race, Lopes took the lead at 7 km. He broke away by increasing the pace to 57-58secs for both of the next two laps. He then ran the last 1500m in about 3:52 and the last 1,000m in 2:32. Is that not change of pace?

What Lopes did not have was a good final sprint, but that is because he was essentially a slow-twitch runner (ST) and Mamede was a fast-twitch runner (FT). And this is a topic myself and Hadd hope to develop more fully within our thread, because it is fundamental to knowing how best to train, and what events will best suit each individual.

This difference in the physical properties of both Lopes and Mamede basically pre-determined their different training and race strategies.

Lopes knew by trial and error (like all ST’s – see Radcliffe) that he needed to take the lead at some point in the race and run away from the lead pack if he wanted to win. He knew that if he was with anyone at the bell who had a better kick than he did, he was almost certain to lose. We saw this in global finals with Radcliffe who would lead for something like 24 laps and then get passed by three runners in the final sprint (e.g.: Ribeiro, Tulu, Wami).

Mamede, on the other hand, who knew he was fast over 200-400m, simply needed to bide his time within the pack and then try to out-kick the opposition on the final lap. Both of these race tactics had their roots in the physiological differences between both runners. The title of the Cabral & Hadd thread is “Two types of runners…”, and both these world-record holding Portuguese runners offer ideal examples of both types: Lopes (ST) and Mamede (FT). Hadd and I will get into this more deeply in future posts on that thread.

What happens in a race is that Lopes does not have a huge reserve of anaerobic capacity to call upon at the bell. He does not have a sizeable percentage of FT fibres (unlike Mamede) to recruit and use to fire up a faster final minute in a 5,000m or 10,000m race.

In saying that both runners were physiologically different in muscle fibre type, and that this necessitated different race tactics to best suit their individual strengths, it should now be understood that both of these runners (types) also needed different training approaches to maximize their individual abilities. And these training approaches were different despite the fact they both trained under the same coach.

Moniz Pereira’s coaching methodology was strongly based in the intermittent and interval-training style. Later, I will continue the discussion on what his coaching methodology was based upon.

But what I can note right now are some fundamental differences between the training of Lopes and Mamede:

Lopes ran long outdoor tempo runs several times per week: MaxLaSS runs almost daily. He used interval training like cruise “soft” training.

Mamede was the opposite: very easy runs on a daily basis, but then he regularly performed very strong track workouts and most of them as intervals with short recovery.

Lopes would take a longer recovery for the same interval workouts that Mamede did, and he would not be able to run the intervals as fast as Mamede did. This difference is fundamental to the training of both types. ST’s do not need to (and indeed, cannot) run the reps as fast as FT types, plus they need more recovery.

Just to clarify, everything after "exactly that" in the previous post is a quote from Antonio.

This sounds like you thought about the slogan first and the practicality second. It just feels like an attempt to 'turn the training world on its head' but without actually thinking about why. Like have you ever heard "Kiss from a Rose" by Seal? Sounds great on the surface, but it kinda makes no sense when you sit and think about it.

Hope it goes well though and you run fast. Good luck.