Interval/tempo rest periods... how much is too much?

Recovery intervals at that pace should have been 30-60 seconds and no longer.

Okay that’s what I thought. This is a guy who either does useless workouts on both sides of the spectrum—either super excessive or super useless.

No real benefit if it's a workout day, but I think it could be beneficial to include those 5/5 intervals into the middle of a long run to keep the pace honest and break the LR up. That's the only way I'd do it.

On its own however, that's a pretty weak workout, and even with short rest it's not too hard. Even running MP continuously for 20 mins isn't that hard of a workout.

Perfectly fine work out...if he increases the pace to threshold and decreases the rest to a minute ish.

Could be useful very very early in a season but rest is way too long to have a benefit beyond moving the legs a little faster. Even 2.5 mins would be pushing it. More like 1-2 min jog at a decent pace.

Like others have said maybe useful early season or in a long run for some spice.

Were the recoveries uptempo or slow jogging? I think it's totally fair to do 40:00 of work bouncing between 5:00 @ MP (threshold-MP) & 5:00 @ something not a whole lot slower (uptempo). You see people do this with k's all the time.

If it's just 20:00 broken up @ marathon pace then I'm out on it. I'm more/less out on 20:00 tempos. If it's gonna be broken, get in 30-40 minutes or more. Maybe in some cases a hard 20:00 tempo has its place. That's just not a ton of time spent in a productive training zone when I'm guessing they're gonna be on their feet for 3 hours.

Also, at the end of the day, what does it matter? If they're happy then go out and do your 4 x 5:00. A lot of people don't even do workouts. Maybe they're getting into running and starting to experiment with faster running, idk.

NERunner53 wrote:

Also, at the end of the day, what does it matter? If they're happy then go out and do your 4 x 5:00. A lot of people don't even do workouts. Maybe they're getting into running and starting to experiment with faster running, idk.

Not trying to trash anyone, just curious if there was any evidence to prove that this would be an effective workout. I should have chose my words better. Seeing the post just kind of got my gears turning.

Is there a general rule of thumb on interval pace v. rest time?

It could be a good workout if he is coming back from a layoff or injury is throwing in some faster work at the end of a long run to ease his body back into.

junk miles? wrote:

A guy a follow on Strava posted a workout where he ran 4x5min at marathon pace with 5 min recovery. Is there actually any benefit to doing that short of an interval at a relatively pedestrian pace with that much recovery? Just seems like you’re not getting much training stimulus out of a workout like that.

Maybe with the rest cut in half it would make more sense?

The only way this workout could be useful by itself is if it were built into a longer run, most likely a long run. In order for it to be useful you're going to have to change the parameters of the workout

-If you want to keep the rest and rep length, I would make the pace around 5k pace

- If you want to keep the pace, I would make the rest about a minute to 2 minutes (if you're in really bad shape) and add a rep or two.

Yes there is benefit

Shorter rests, or zero rests work well also. It really depends on the context of the workout, how it fits into the overarching training cycle and the performance level of the athlete.

JHC!

Run fast 5 milers.

Do interval workouts with reps so fast that 3-5 minutes recovery is practically required.

LRC posters are the running equivalent of 'nudge theory'.

Running is a skill, and you get better at it by practicing. 5 minute recoveries for MP is excessive, but I bet this guy got a boost in running economy by running pretty quickly for 25 minutes, if broken up. He could probably come back and do a real session the next day. I personally wouldn't do this workout though.

Use what is perfect for most individuals. After every rep just wait easy walking until pulse is back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60 % of MHR ).

The Wizard JS wrote:

Use what is perfect for most individuals. After every rep just wait easy walking until pulse is back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60 % of MHR ).

Perfect indeed. That must be why your athletes have bad result after bad result.