What is "float"?

runrincerepeat wrote:

lease wrote:

When you're driving a car and you hit the accelerator, that's sprinting.

When you are done sprinting, take your foot off the gas, and hit the brakes to get to a slower speed, that's jogging (or walking).

When you take your foot of the gas but *don't* hit the brakes, that's floating.

POTD

Agree. A great way to explain another inane question.

Excellent response and right on.

It has a specific and largely understood meaning for sprinting.

Distance coaches got it from sprint coaches, but it does not have an agreed meaning in the distance realm.

When I'm coaching distance, I use it like this: You coast at the end of your interval, carrying quite a bit of momentum for 30-50 meters, easing into a pace that you feel is a sweet spot where you're balancing an effort that allows for recovery while still covering ground as quickly as possible. When I do it myself, the float intervals usually have an average pace of around 10-20 seconds slower than MP.

Simple, for distance athletes it’s a way to make your workout appear both hip and tough. It’s a Designer Workout

"Float" is called float, because it is a feeling. You feel like you are floating between hard reps. Your form (mechanics) is temporarily set/stuck/prepared for the harder pace. The rest interval is short enough that you won't feel the same plodding sensation of jogging. Your muscles are still sort of firing as if they are prepared for the fast pace. It's impossible to float for very long during a workout, in my opinion. I don't think people float for much more than 400m, even if they are doing hard/long intervals, such as mile repeats. I think it's possible to float for a longer distance, after a seriously hard/long effort, such as a 5k race, but usually there is no reason to float for long after such a hard effort.

forcerunner wrote:

In a specific recent workout I did:

3 x 10:00 at LT with a 3:00 float rest.

LT at 5:20ish and float at 5:40ish

I've found it to be more helpful for either early season work with cruise intervals/broken tempo before transitioning to straight tempo at a faster effort as the specific event you're preparing for draws closer. By running your recoveries at a more moderate effort you're stitching together a longer overall effort at a higher intensity. It should be noted that to be able to add floats you also need to be able to do the "on" portion correctly and have the base fitness to be able to handle that workload with normal recoveries as the stimulus becomes more difficult by adding floats.

This response makes good sense, many of the other responses seem like excuses to do a workout too hard just to sound cool or boost your average pace on Strava.

"Makes good sense," but is wrong. The previous poster basically described what I understand as "cruise intervals."

Float is called "float" because the feeling is "floating." You don't float for 3 minutes after slow LT pace...maybe you do if you are have no capacity for speed whatsoever.

Like a poster said, there's some connection with sprint training, in that sprinters also can ease-in and ease-off.

I would guess that "floating" probably came out of the early days of fartlek training where that term seems to be common in German, English, Finnish, Cerutty, Lydiard

(windsprints) American training, etc... Floating is a sensation related to muscle patterns related to just having run a hard pace. Hard to believe, but it might not be directly correlated to a pace on your gps watch, or one of Daniels or Tinman's paces. Still, floating is a good skill to learn. No hard stops, no hard starts, that's a big part of floating.

Regarding the previous post, I was referring to the float as a moderate effort recovery in between work intervals. I imagine quite a lot of people would agree with this definition of a float in the context of a workout and not as abstract as you describe being a sensation. The original term for fartlek might've been speed play, but in today's running language it's perfectly fine to call a set of time based intervals a fartlek as almost everyone agrees on that definition.

It's what the butterfly did before stinging you like a bee!

It's not abstract at all. Floating is really a very basic and elementary sensation, and not something that goes on for a length of time. It could be hard to explain to an old runner who only ever did intervals in the strict on/off sense. If you choose to misuse a long-established term, which happens to mean more than "ease off a little," both in approach and physiology, than feel free to muddy the waters. Of course fartlek can be set to a certain time, I was making a point about training in the 30's-70's. The meaning of floating doesn't go away because people don't do pure fartlek much anymore.

Oh Please wrote:

Sham 69 wrote:

Guys guys guys... Are we sure that we aren't talking about a POOL workout here???

As a software engineer, I thought he was talking about double precision floating point numbers ...

He was clearly talking about the period after you write a check, but it hasn't been debited from your account yet.

i see it as you have your run pace and then you surge for the "on"/hard paces rather than easing up for the rest durations

floaty float float wrote:

i see it as you have your run pace and then you surge for the "on"/hard paces rather than easing up for the rest durations

Yeah, I sometimes did this: ~1/2 mile "on" followed by a similar distance at normal training-run speed (in my case probably a little slower than 20km pace). I generally did this alternation for an hour.

And can honestly say that for me they were probably the hardest workouts ever. Afterward I would sit in the locker room for maybe 15 minutes, too beaten to move. I was more of a speed guy and found this no-real-rest stuff to be deadly.

I had a great track coach in high school. He himself was a 400 guy and coached us more as 4/8 runners, but we had a good amount of success at the 1600/3200 level as well.

We did a float workout every now and then that comes to mind.

Something like 10x300. We’d sprint 10m, float 290m. Then the next rep sprint 20m, float the rest. Sprint 30,40 and so on. I think we capped it at 50-60m and keep that for the last half of the workout.

Don’t really know how optimal it was, but we did a lot of speed work, so the float served, like other people said, as threshold work.

I believe there’s a term for it. “Lactate shuttle”. I’ll link an article about it at the end.

The point is that the faster “on” section is faster than threshold, so you accumulate acid. the slower “off” section is marathon pace or slower, but not a jog.

The slower section you are forcing your body to more efficiently use lactate as FUEL, not just to clear it faster.

Here’s an example of athletes doing this kind of workout in a tempo run.

https://youtu.be/mQRIpt6ujZo

And here’s the link I was talking about earlier.

https://www.newintervaltraining.com/

It seems in my eyes that these workouts should take the place of a threshold workout, but closer to the peak race where you want to practice running faster

Ho Hum wrote:

I've always understood float to be somewhere between marathon and HM pace depending on the workout. Lets you keep the effort level high so that a shorter workout still gives good training stimulus.

You have the right concept, but it completely differs depending on the rep pace.

Float between race pace for a 16:00 5k runner could be HM pace, maybe 5:45-6:00/mile.

A sprinter or 800m runner doing 300s as 100 hard/100 float/100 hard might run the hard part in 12-point and float the 100m in less than 15s.

It is definitely an ambiguous term which can easily lead to blown up workouts if not clearly explained. My opinion it can best be described like driving a car and taking your foot off of the accelerator but not hitting the brake.

jaspfwsd wrote:

I hear people use the term "float" to describe part of their workouts. How is this different from "rest" or "jog"?

I assume it is just a pretentious substitute for rest, but maybe I am missing out by not floating?

This is how I have always seen it, for distance running, from slowest to fastest, with an xample:

Rest = standing or walking around (4x400 @ 800 pace with 5' rest)

Jog = Very slow/easy running, significantly slower than you would normally run (8x1000 with 1' jog... If I normally run 7:00 pace, I would job 8:00-8:30 pace)

EZ = about as fast as you would go on a regular everyday run (20 miles, with the last 16 alternating between [some pace] and EZ.)

Float = faster than you would go on a regular every day run. Big range to it depending on what the workout is. continuing from a 7:00 "normal" pace, 6:00 or faster might be my float pace for a workout like 200 or 400 repeats... 8x400 w/ 200m float is a classic 5k predictor workout. 30/40 200s is also a classic, I have done that workout at both 32/42 when I wasn't as fast, and 30/40 when I was faster.

Float workouts can be good if used effectively. Don't make every workout harder than it needs to be by having floats instead of jogs or rests, but it's a fun tool to get a little bit more out of some of your workouts.

Spartiatis wrote:

It is definitely an ambiguous term which can easily lead to blown up workouts if not clearly explained.

This is true. I have even heard the term to describe the 2nd 100 of a 400 meter race.

it is when the poop rises to the waterline of the toilet instead of of sinking to the bottom

Float is slower than threshold 8x400 w/200 Float for me back in the day was 400's in65-67 w/200 In 40 seconds. Or my favourite 12 laps at threshold 14:45 1 mile float in 6 min 8 laps at 9:30 And float last 400 for about 31 min for 10k. Way before the super shoes.