That workout would be very easy to do faster than your mile pace. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad workout; not every workout is supposed to destroy you. But that workout isn’t going to be a real test of your fitness.
That workout would be very easy to do faster than your mile pace. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad workout; not every workout is supposed to destroy you. But that workout isn’t going to be a real test of your fitness.
So it isnt a bad brick to build on? Should I increase the volume while cutting the rest to 1:10-1:20?
That workout would be very easy to do faster than your mile pace. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad workout; not every workout is supposed to destroy you. But that workout isn’t going to be a real test of your fitness.
So it isnt a bad brick to build on? Should I increase the volume while cutting the rest to 1:10-1:20?
It's a good early season workout. Anaerobic efficiency before anaerobic capacity. You could eventually increase the distance to 300s and 400s etc...to get a better race predictor.
Or you could stay with 200s but increase the number of reps, or cut the rest, or go faster. It all depends on your specific race goals.
Did 10x200 on 90s jog rest and I had to slow down to not go above race pace
Is it because of the rest length or because the workout isn’t that good by itself?
We’d start the season doing ~16 200s at mile pace w/40 seconds rest. Got up to about 24 by the middle of the season. I suppose if your ‘jog’ rest was close to 10k pace that’d be reasonable. Otherwise that is a lot of rest.
thats the kind of stuff we'd do the week of a big meet we were focusing on, just enough to turnover the legs, get a little aerobic work, but nothing too taxing. Go to the race feeling ready to run.
It's a good workout for turnover/maybe before a race but the reps are short & easy to get through with that amount of rest. I usually do 200s @ 800 w./ 90s standing or tack them on at the end of workouts just to touch on top-end speed. I'll have milers do 300s/400s & then build to some 600-1k reps.
I think a big misconception is that if a workout doesn’t have you breathing super hard or doesn’t have your legs screaming at you by the end it wasn’t a good one.
Id make some small adjustments to make this workout a very good one for introducing middle distance pace, or sharpening up for someone that’s been doing a lot of more aerobic stuff.
I like to go CURRENT 3k pace working to 1k pace, and I’ll do 12-16 reps of 200m on, 200m off. Instead of a shuffle jog, I like to go about what you’d do for a recovery run, so for me 7:50-8:10 pace or +\-1:00, for you maybe faster or slower who knows. I tend to live in the camp that your rest time is less relevant if your legs and heart rate never get to fully relax, so you can allow longer rest time if you will be aerobically active during that rest time and it’ll allow you to have a more productive rep.
After you’ve rinsed and repeated this workout a couple times and felt out your pace, you can make it something like 6x400m, 6x200m, and then eventually a straight up 12x400m cutdown workout with 1:00 jogging rest which will make you an absolute monster mile-5k. When I got to being able to do the 12x400m workout going from 70-60 w/ 1:00 jogging rest I ran very fast from 800m-3k, and it all started with 200s in 36/37 w/ 200m jog recovery.