Walk, jog or rest during recovery (from Sweatscience)

The writer is among my favourites in sport science. Interesting article btw! Thanks for sharing

Some observations:

1) The fact that the very first rep was harder for the rest group compared to the jogging group suggests that the jogging recoverers were mentally holding themselves back in anticipation of the overall effort they could reasonably sustain.

2) The fact that lactate was higher in the rest group is consistent with previous findings that suggest that mild activity clears lactate faster than rest + the rest group was producing more lactate to begin with by running harder.

3) My guess is that walking recovery would be in between complete rest and jogging, not equivalent to complete rest as the article seems to suggest (though the study appears to have not explicitly considered walking).

My personal experience is consistent with these findings: I find myself running my 800 reps 10-20 seconds/mile faster with walk recovery compared to even really slow 13’+ jog recoveries. I run both by feel, so my perceived effort during the reps is about the same (modulo feel accuracy) but I know now not to think my fitness dropped on jogging recovery workout days but rather to expect to be somewhat slower on those days.

My watch seems to give me more credit on walk recovery days, but I think that’s just because it is probably programmed to consider total time spent at faster paces to compute training effect.

If I stop after an interval I get a strange sensation in the heart area. As I advance in age it gets stronger. I walk five seconds and the sensation goes away.

That strange sensation is continual loss of higher function brain cells by running intervals decade after decade. Only the brain stem remains telling you to stop. I have exactly the same problem.

Your brain is in your chest?

the low-intensity exercise keeps blood flowing, which eliminates metabolic waste products such as lactate and protons more quickly, and thus enables you to go faster in the next interval. (The idea that lactate causes muscular fatigue has fallen out of favor, but it’s still plausible that lactate levels are correlated with performance-impairing metabolites.)

Found the same with walk v very slow jog. But most people have trash form at ultra slow paces so no surprise if it clears less than walking.

Feel best if my recovery is 50 meter walk then rest of lap (350 meters) at mile pace + 60% (ie 4:00 miler goes 6:25 pace) then one lap at mile pace + 40% (ie 4:00 miler goes 5:35 pace) then use that pace as a rolling start into next interval.

If you want shorter rest periods obviously this doesn’t work, but for more volume at the desired pace it’s worked well for me. I’m an 800/1500 runner for reference so can generate a lot of lactate.

Worth a shot for anyone bored with their routine.

Not atypical for older runners to faint if they stop suddenly after a hard interval. More gradual changes in speed going up and down definitely the safer route older we get. Leave the volatility to the kids right.

This is especially true when running interveals on the treadmill. It's a lot better to gradually slow down rather than stop abruptly when doing fast running on the treadmill. Many people (including young runners) experience motion sickness with running very fast and coming to a sudden stop(jumping to the sides) on a treadmill. Dehydration, as many people experience sweating a ton during treadmill running, further exacerbates this issue.

Heart rate drops faster than blood circulation, so blood is forced into the heart. That is actually a good thing, since that improves stroke volume of the heart.

Interval refers to the recovery period.

When everyone uses a word a certain way, that becomes the meaning of the word, regardless of what it originally meant. Plus, when someone says they are going to "do some intervals" today, they are thinking about the running part, not the recovery part.

There are times for standing recovery and times for jogging recovery. As a speedy guy who was always weak in my endurance I found I really benefited from jogging recoveries, and also jogging recoveries where I was keeping pace honest. Like, it’s easy to do a rep and then shuffle a 200 at 9 min pace but if you are told to do it closer to 6:30-7:00 pace it almost becomes an exercise in recovering while still working if that makes sense. I found I benefited from this.

I do high intensity interval training by sitting in one place very aggressively.

Don't think this article really addressed anything.

walk/rest during base when you're trying to work on speed, jog when peaking to more closely simulate your race