It was discovered way back in the 70s that you could run a large number of fairly fast, short repeats with very short rest and still keep lactate levels low.
From the TV series about the family, the hill repeats workout looked to be fast, high quality running. Perhaps you only need one session a week of that to maintain 1500m closing speed?
Well put. Add to this that many young runners tend to do tempo runs too fast, and I think the double threshold system is a win, especially if you can implement it early on. Not only will the athlete be better educated about lactate and what exactly "threshold" means, but with double sessions, they will be less prone to go too fast due to the high volume.
Additionally, as mentioned in the Running Trips article, I think athletes should be built up to double thresholds, especially if they have other non-running stressors in life. Start them off doing an easy run in the morning and a threshold session in the evening. After that, have them do a short morning session of fartlek/cruise intervals @ ~80% HR max with a true threshold session in the evening, and only then progress to double threshold if they're doing well.
The Next question is who's going to figure out how to run 5k pace and faster and still make it a threshold workout with enough volume. I want to see people doing 50x200 @5k->3k pace with 30 seconds rest and 100x100 @ 3k-> 15 pace and finally 200 x 50 @ 15 down to 8 pace. I think once we start hitting the 100x100 and 200x50 we can finally take down 3:26 and 1:40.
The double threshold system clearly works, but in every article I can find online there's no mention to the transition part to the track, i.e., the last weeks of which Gjert and Jakob were talking about when approaching race season.
I obviosuly get that in precompetitive and competitive phase the amount of double threshold and the overall threshold volume goes down, but how is that replaced? How do they transition from their aerobic buildup to the track season. They maintain the 1500m speed with a speed development session on Monday and with those hills, but how does a precompetitive week look? Because I get that they probably do 300s, 400s at race pace, but it's too generic in my opinion. In other words, in every single article about double threshold we don't have the icing on the cake, which is very important if someone doesn't want to mess it all.
And another thing to understand for athletes who can't handle high mileage, is whether the double threshold session may be replaced with an equivalent one on the boost or on the elliptical to get the same benefit without running 18 or more km per week
"Smith, who learned about the system by reading Bakken’s old blog posts from the early 2000s, was one of the first to bring it to North America, taking advantage of the flexible schedule afforded by virtual classes during the COVID pandemic to introduce it at NAU during the 2020-21 school year. Now, more and more coaches are incorporating its principles."
How much of an academic workload did NAU athletes have before?
I thought Gjert said they mainly use track races as their track work during the season and continue to work on threshold. Go to 3:00 in the video below:
David McCarthy chats with legendary Norwegian coach Gjert Ingebrigtsen after Narve Gilje Nordas runs 3:32.39 for the 1500m win at the On Track Nights: Paris ...
The double threshold system clearly works, but in every article I can find online there's no mention to the transition part to the track, i.e., the last weeks of which Gjert and Jakob were talking about when approaching race season.
I obviosuly get that in precompetitive and competitive phase the amount of double threshold and the overall threshold volume goes down, but how is that replaced? How do they transition from their aerobic buildup to the track season. They maintain the 1500m speed with a speed development session on Monday and with those hills, but how does a precompetitive week look? Because I get that they probably do 300s, 400s at race pace, but it's too generic in my opinion. In other words, in every single article about double threshold we don't have the icing on the cake, which is very important if someone doesn't want to mess it all.
And another thing to understand for athletes who can't handle high mileage, is whether the double threshold session may be replaced with an equivalent one on the boost or on the elliptical to get the same benefit without running 18 or more km per week
I thought Gjert said they mainly use track races as their track work during the season and continue to work on threshold. Go to 3:00 in the video below:
Yes, I watched that video, but the problem with Gjert Ingebrigtsen is that he often hides the truth of their training. I remember a podcast in norwegian who was translated in a thread here were he claimed Jakob run before the Florence european record in the 5000m something like 25x400 starting at 57 and not slowing down, but then maybe the 400 were just 12, or maybe 15. Gjert is very good at answering questions without giving the real answer to the question asked. And I understand that, he has a formula that works, and everyone knows what they do in their base phase, but in the 5-7 weeks leading up to championships season what they do remains uncertain, and when asked, his answer is not an accurate and precise one, because probably that's is "secret" . In the TV show the last workout by Jakob before Tokyo was shown on camera and Gjert said it was pretty hard despite being close to the competition because of the problem of handling the heats and semifinals. However, the workout wasn't mentioned at all
In the late 1990s Bill Dellinger served as the interim head distance coach for 6months at Wake Forest while they were recruiting a new coach. I got to see his “Oregon System” which I presume had been in place for decades. It consisted of 2 workouts a day every Tuesday and Thursday and a race or single hard session on Saturday. The workouts were shorter but more intense than the double threshold stuff but still the same principal. Here’s the breakdown:
Tuesday am - Oregon drill - 3 x 1000m done easy (3:30), medium (3:00) and hard (2:40) - these times are rough estimates for what the avg runner was hitting (mostly 14:20 ish runners). Rest between intervals consisted of 10x 100m strides done easy, medium hard with 10s between strides.
Tuesday pm - 4000m continuous running alternating 400m at 5 k race pace with 200m at tempo (a variant of the old pre workout)
Thursday am: Oregon drill
Thursday pm: 2400m continuous running alternating 300m at just below mile pace with 100m at just below tempo pace (ended up running ~5k pace for the 2400m)
Saturday: race or more traditional intervals.
The wake guys improved massively with this training. They ended up with three guys running under or close to 4min and finished 7th in XC the next year.
I’m pretty sure this training was what Dellinger used in the glory days of Salazar, Prefontain etc at Oregon. Maybe this was the dawn of the two workouts a day philosophy.
Was this when Gary Sievers was hired at Wake? He ran for Oregon and was pretty fast at 800 and 1500. When he coached at College of Southern Idaho for a few years he did straight up by the book Oregon system
I thought Gjert said they mainly use track races as their track work during the season and continue to work on threshold. Go to 3:00 in the video below:
I’m not totally convinced double threshold is the “secret.” Bowerman and OAC are the two best US based teams and neither do double threshold, as mentioned in the LetsRun article. These groups typically do 8-10 miles of threshold in one go. Kipchoge’s group doesn’t do double threshold either. Again, they do 8-10 miles at once. These groups are often doubling on these days, too. So the overall volume is similar, around 20 miles for the day. I wonder if the biggest benefit to double threshold comes from having a massive mileage day with some controlled intensity. As others have mentioned, a big benefit to double threshold is that it slows the athlete down and often prevents them from going too fast, which most are prone to doing. Running closer to 3.0 mmol instead of 4.0 or going over the line.