This interview with Zach Facioni (3:39/7:51/13:30) goes pretty in depth into their training. It's from December 2020 so two years ago, but the training philosophy should be the same.
RT: Before you left for college, I believe you were coached by Ken Green. How does the training differ compared to what you were used to back in Australia?
ZF: I tend to believe that in essence, a lot of distance training is pretty similar nowadays. Despite that, there are absolutely a few key differences between what I’m doing now and what I did in years past. I would argue that the major difference, which I believe has been a genuine game changer for me, was upping my volume and dropping intensity. I’m currently averaging 145kms a week, up from approx. 120kms I did pre-college. A vast majority of my sessions are low intensity work. A key staple for my training now, which is something I rarely ever did before, is threshold work. If you were to take a peek at my strava, I think you would notice that a vast majority of the track sessions I do, have some form of threshold element, which I think has been really beneficial in building my base. In addition to the threshy work, we also do a lot of long tempos, running around 6-10 miles at sub threshold pace (currently around 3.07/km ish for reference).
RT: Can you lay out a typical week of training for us, during a non-race week. Ie, a hard training week?
ZF: A standard week is not too dissimilar from the typical week anyone else might give you (this is gonna be in miles, so I apologise in advance). We start our week on Sundays, which I know can be a hot topic of debate but nevertheless, Sunday is a standard, classic long run day. Typically, anywhere from 16-18 miles with the occasional 3 easy miles in the arvo. Something we have also started introducing is the hard Sunday run where after a couple of miles of warm up, I’ll up the tempo for the rest of the run to around 3.20-3.30/km. Mondays are an easy double day then Tuesdays I’ll hit up the track for a session with some threshy work or faster stuff. Wednesdays I’ll grind out a medium long run – usually around 12-13 miles. Thursday’s, we do a something called speed development which is a Coach John Hayes’ specialty. We do either short, steep hill sprints or 30-30-30s on the track (30m @ 800m effort, 30m @ 400m effort, 30m @ sprint). Friday is another workout day and tends to be where I do my longer work (long tempos, 10xmile etc.), and finally Saturday is another easy day.
RT: Favourite session?
ZF: This is a genuinely tough question for me, as so many of the sessions we do are so varied and its rare we do the same thing consistently. I could go boring and say km reps or quarters but I’ll go a little more extravagant and say hills, something I’ve been a fan of since I started running. Specifically, Buena Vista which is an 800m hill we run at just a few miles away from the Wake campus. Usually we punch out 6x800m hills with a jog to the bottom as the recovery and occasionally will spice things up with some 600s followed by some fast 300s. Every 100m is marked out on the road so its super easy to keep track of your pace – I’m a sucker for sessions where I have a direct comparison to previous work so I can see how I’m progressing.