Track Intervals bad longterm????

Intervals always good year-round, 2 a week is good. Just do them extra hard in season.

It’s all about your effort level and duration. Running hard 800s until you throw up is different than hopping on the track and doing some 200s at a little faster than mile pace with plenty of rest.

I follow the school of thought that interval work is great year round, don’t call it speed work cause it implies you have to go fast and hard, but you need to periodize it. Normally I like short fast intervals with good rest, and then on another day do medium to long intervals at slower than race pace, when it’s time to peak, you want to meet in the middle for speed and effort, and take less rest time while doing so.

Most of the year, your workouts should look like:

8x200m @ 800-mile pace, take as much rest as you want

8-12x400m @ 3k-5k pace, 2-3 minutes rest

5-6x800m or 1000m at 10k pace (for a highschooler that doesn’t run 10k, I like to say 5k pace + 20-25 seconds a mile) 2-3 minutes rest

Then for the 1-2 months leading up to your goal race, they can get more like:

8x200m @800m pace, 2 minutes rest

8-10x400m @mile pace, 2 minutes rest

5-6x1000m @ 5k pace, 2-3 minutes rest

The workouts look similar, but the shorter rest time and faster paces will burn you out/injure you while the other workouts probably won’t. You need those workouts to get in your best possible shape though, and doing the other workouts year round sets you up to be able to handle these workouts better when the time comes.

I know he’s young copper runner but 2 minutes rest on those last workouts is too much. 60-90 is perfect for those.

It depends on the intensity and the rest period (that's what the interval is). Slower intervals with longer (2 mins) rest are fine all year.

In season you drop the interval as you get closer to your goal race.

Check out Mihaly Igloi (SP?) he's the "father" of interval training.

If it worries you, go do some intervals on the road, grass, or trails as well. As long as you keep the effort the same as you would on the track, the stimulus should be roughly equivalent. Just run for time instead of distance - running 30-60 seconds on and 1-2 minutes off around a field or on a trail will probably be like running 200-300m intervals. My physio recommends doing short intervals barefoot on the grass every few weeks just to maintain strength in the foot muscles.

I don't think you should be doing two interval workouts every week, and neglecting threshold/tempo work. The threshold work is long term development, building up your engine. The fast interval workouts then rapidly improve your fitness in the short term. If you're always doing these interval workouts you'll always be pretty race ready, but you won't have as much of a noticeable improvement a year later.

Yes, all the replies here are reasonable, but nobody mentioned this. A week is only 6 days of running I dont know that you need 2 Interval days in build up? One is plenty.

Track intervals are crucial to long term development… if you do them correctly 😏

Hammering V02 workouts for weeks on end will probably burn you out. Threshold repeats with short rest and fast repeats with full recovery are fine to do year round IMO.

What's the purpose of each workout? It looks like every interval session is ~2 miles of work. I would consider using Daniel's percentages for each type:

1. Threshold intervals 10% of weekly volume

2. Short reps w/ full recovery 5% of weekly volume.

3. V02 intervals 8% of weekly volume.

Your schedule overall seems to lack threshold work. I would consider trying to get a "T" workout in every week (something like 3x1 mile w/ 1:00 rest or 6x800 w/30 sec rest) and then sprinkle in your current workouts for the other session.

I'd typically run about 20% of my mileage at "steady" pace, either as a designated run or progressing into it towards the end, 10-15% at threshold, 6-8% at CV, and then 2% at VO2 max or faster (excluding strides). If you recover fast, you can repeat this throughout (nearly) the entire year.

Here are a sample 2 weeks in the middle of my season:

Monday: 9 miles including 7 steady + strides
Tuesday: morning: 8x1k threshold; afternoon: 2x3k threshold; total: 13
Wednesday: 6 easy
Thursday: 8 easy including 3 steady + strides
Friday: 8x800 @ CV; afternoon: 6x300 at mile --> 800 effort; total: 9
Saturday: 4 easy
Sunday: 12 miles including 3 steady + strides

Monday: 9 with 7 steady + strides
Tuesday: 4 mile threshold + 6x200 @ 800; total: 9
Wednesday: 4/4 easy
Thursday: 8 easy with 3 steady + strides
Friday: 3x5x500 around 5k effort + 3x3x200 around mile effort; total: 9
Saturday: 5 easy
Sunday: 12 miles including 3 steady + strides

Your track times last year for a 7th grader are EXCELLENT, so you may just want to do similar workouts this year (although each year you should add a little bit more mileage). As the old saying goes "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But with that said, I personally wouldn't recommend 2 interval workouts per week all-year-round. I've been coaching middle school runners for over 30 years and one of my 7th graders ran the 800 in 2:02 and the 1600 in 4:30 without any interval workouts whatsoever. But that was him and not you. Everyone is different and everyone responds differently to workouts. The key is to find the workouts that work best for YOU. Good luck!

I'll echo what a few others have mentioned - interval workouts are good and sustainable as long as they are part of a well-rounded training program.

In the workouts the OP mentioned, the intervals in questions are likely 5k pace at the slowest. They are fine, useful workouts, but I think twice per week is too much. I would recommend workouts along those lines once every 10 days or every 2 weeks. Fill the other workout days with progression runs, tempo work (continuous or reps), fartlek, top-end speed work, etc. to be a better rounded runner, and not get stale on that narrower band of stimulus.

We do intervals probably close to 40 weeks out of the year, we have no problems setting PRs throughout the year.

Like anything, intervals are a tool, how you use that tool matters a lot more than what the tool is specifically. If you're using a screwdriver like a hammer, you might not have great results, but use it the way it's intended and you'll probably be happy with the results.

A few people have mentioned 2 workouts a week. That's pretty standard. Some mentioned one being some kind of tempo/threshold session as opposed to "intervals" but is there a significant difference physiologically between a 3 mile tempo and 3x1 mile tempo with 60s rest? Sure one is broken up so it's slightly easier, but the distinction between it now being "intervals" vs "continuous" isn't going to turn it into a workout that burns you out into one that helps you long term.

The same thing happens if you drop down to 400's. I can easily make that session a barn burner, or I can have it act a lot like a lactate threshold session.

The big reason some coaches think of these interval workouts as short term is partly because of the old periodization models that someone like Lydiard might have used had them only appear at the end of their season, and partly because some coaches really push sessions on the track hard to the point that they can only maintain them for so long before they need to hit reset and focus on more aerobic work.

As long as you do track intervals in a controlled way, such that you don't get injured, they're totally fine to do long term. Plus, not all track intervals are created equally. Some are short/fast, some long and not as fast, some have more (or less) restful rest and serve different purposes than others.

Also, high intensity intervals shouldn't be all you're doing. You need to balance them out with a much larger portion of lower intensity aerobic running. Do enough comfortable aerobic running that you look forward to the track intervals, not so many track intervals that you have lactic acid exploding out of your eyeballs.

As a lot of other posters suggest, there are many types of interval training.

My personal experience (and it's remained similar over 50 years of running) is that for me, high intensity intervals 10-12 x 200m at 800m pace, 8x400m at 1500m pace 5-6 x 1000m at 5000m pace would result in a quick improvement, but also a quick peak, followed by what old-timers would call 'going stale.'

What I do now is intervals all year round using the Easy Interval Method (running at 400m/800m/1500m/5000m and 10000m pace, but with volume and recovery keeping them aerobic), then switch to more intensive reps about four weeks from the target race.

Slower twitch runners would tend to peak less quickly and hold peak for longer.

Depends what you mean by intervals. Threshold or cv can be done year round, even 200s or even 300s at mile pace can with full rest, but something like 10x400 is good for the last month

Lydiard said that you can build stamina "for as long as possible." What you do after that depends on your previous training. 30 miles per week can be plenty for a 14 year old, and that's if it all jogging. The fact that you are writing into Let's Run shows that you have interest in getting better, do not be in too much of a hurry.

If you are in season you probably are going to feel that you must do what the coach says. Most schools/states go with 14 week seasons. If you can get your coach to have you run slow tempo runs the first two weeks that's probably best for your age group. After that if you have races coming up you might do one workout of easy intervals. 5 X 400 @ Mile Pace walk 200 between each.

It is better to do too little than too much, because once you get injured, it's difficult to get back.

Cavorty,

I like your response because you can build stamina more easily than developing the ability to run w/o air as difficult interval programs recommend.