High volume interval session at a quick pace

this is literally the entire point of intervals...

'Much more than usual/typical' would have been a more precise phrasing. With 200m jog rest, usual/typical might be say 5-6 x 1000m at 5km pace. Here I did nearly double that volume, with more or less equivalent rest for the most part.

I can perhaps emphasise that this was not a really hard session; I was originally intending 200m jog rest after all the 400's, but felt that 100m was enough for the most part once I got into it.

Does anybody have experience of doing this kind of workout, and can corroborate that the use of shorter repetitions (even with short rest) allows one to do much more volume at a quick (for you) pace?

LOL read this back to yourself slowly and see if you can reach a logical answer.

spoiler: obviously

What you did here was basically the combination of an L1/L2 workout. Whereas folks like Jakob would have done a double T session with 1Ks in the morning and 400s at night, you did half and half. Not a bad workout in terms of volume, but a bit wonky in terms of rhythm. You would have been better off doing 1 session of 1Ks and then another session of 400s either that evening or later in the week.

This thread reminds me that time I invented running diagonals.

People seem a bit fixated on how I formulated the question; maybe no-one is interested in discussing it, but to me to do 11km of volume with mostly quite short rest at what I believe is around 5km pace and quicker was baffling, and what I was looking for was other people's experiences of such sessions, presumably involving short repetitions. I tried searching for similar threads and did not find any; what I did find suggested that no matter how one tried to get around it (shortening repetitions, increasing rest, ...) there was a limit on volume, perhaps around 8km for most people.

As I tried to explain, I did not set out to run "at 5km pace" (for the 1000s), I just ran from experience at whatever felt natural, so was surprised at the splits; but even though the session was controlled, I do not think that I have suddenly leapt in fitness and that the explanation is that the pace was actually significantly slower than my 5km pace.

Yes, shouldn’t be an issue often in these sessions some runners will find another gear late in the workout as metabolic and motor unit recruitment adjustments w shift of blood flow leads to adaptations I’d suggest keeping the high intensity mix to < 10% total session volume

Threshold is outdated / misguided terminology, it’s good running somewhat hard to hard work replacing jogging very light to light

also no one knows how you're splitting these reps. It's real easy to run 3:00/km (for eg) if you go out in 67 and you'll be able to keep repeating this for longer than if you paced it properly.

Stop looking so much into it. You had a good session, nothing here is surprising - it's typical of interval sessions, I don't know really what more you're looking for from people here because it's seemingly either praise or amazement that you discovered something new

The recoveries weren't that short, and you did a large portion of it in very small reps (400's) so ofc that will help beef the session up. Come back when you've done 11x1K @ 5K pace and then you might get the reaction you're looking for

1. Do a longer warm up. 2kms is likely not even 10 mins of running. (Also, do strides before a workout like this).

2. Your workout is ridiculously convoluted. I don't know how you can estimate the optimal intensity for each repetition, let alone the workout as a whole. It seems like you're just guessing.

3. Anyone can run way faster than their race paces in workouts, if they do the workout way harder than it needs to be. Most people aren't burying themselves in workouts like this, because they find they get a better overall training effect if they keep it in "4th gear" e.g. they maintain better form, are able to recover better for their next workout, and don't get burned out before their race (where they should be going to another level).

My goodness! I was not looking for any reaction, or indeed any reflections on the session itself as it pertains to me; as I have already written twice, I was looking for other people to share experiences, as I had not found anything in a search amongst other threads. That is to say: "I once did such and such", "I once surprised myself...". Clearly too much to ask; if I had the ability to delete the thread, I would do so.

Just to note that I have used the 'Report post' functionality to ask that this thread be deleted since I cannot do so myself, in case this affects whether people wish to post further to the thread.

I mean this works but it's stupid complex. Why all the different distances! Pick 2 distances not 5+

Serious suggestion: Search for "Igloi" (not Ghost of!) on this site. Or if that causes too many false hits, search for "Orville Atkins."

With the use of a wide variety of distances and intensities, in two-a-day marathon (sorry) sessions, Igloi's runners got vastly more done, at a much higher quality, then most of their opponents at the time. This was particularly true when he was still coaching in Hungary; I believe that at one time his athletes held all the WRs at standard distances from 1500 to 10000m.

This was basically next-generation stuff following what Zatopek had done. Z too had run a higher volume, at a higher speed, than almost all of his opponents.

It’s hard to take this post at face value. You say the effort was a threshold effort on the Ks. But the pace is significantly faster than your 5k pace? That’s not possible for even the world’s fittest athletes. So there are two possibilities. Either this was a very big and intense session where you were producing serious lactate (between 10 and 20 mmol/l) or you are ready for a very big PR. Maybe a combination of the two.

If you truly feel this was a threshold effort or something close to it, you should sign up for a bunch of races, because you will have breakthrough performances awaiting. This is a high-volume threshold session for a 15:15 runner.

Yeah. Gallawalkers have done it for decades.

If you are "jogging" recoveries at 10:00-12:30/mile pace (??!), just walk around for that duration of time.

Any level of activity you are getting at that pace is not worth the time spent in terrible shuffling mechanics. If you want to keep it active, but barely active, then just walk.

40-47 seconds "jog" for a 100m! Wow.

Since it does not seem that the thread will be deleted, I feel it would be discourteous not to reply to a couple of posts. Firstly, thank you very much to the person who mentioned Igloi. In fact Igloi was in my mind during the actual session when I decided to cut down the rest between the 400s to 100m (but kept one 200m, after the third one, to make sure I didn't dig too depp); I had something in my mind about the way in which I have read he used to adjust sessions dynamically according to how the runners were feeling/looked.

(The session I did may look complex on paper, but it's just a consequence of basing it on experience and feeling, ensuring that I could do the combination of volume and paces (both threshold-ish and faster) that I was looking for, inserting a little extra rest here and there (between sets and after the third 400m repetition as it turned out) to keep the intensity controlled. As I have written, I was not looking for feedback on the way I set up the session, though, and do not plan to give justifications for it; this is just to try to explain how one might arrive it for anybody who might be interested).

To the person who wrote that they could not reconcile the fact that I felt the 1000's were threshold effort, but probably ended up at around 5km pace; this is what I too am trying to understand, and is why I created the thread. For I do not think that either of the two possibilities you mention apply, and I was looking for evidence (people's experiences) that there might be a third one, namely that a high volume of fast (relative to the person) repetitions can be possible, without digging too deeply, with a certain construction of the intervals; people seem to have been quick to pour scorn on this, but I agree with the poster who suggested that it might be interesting to compare with the old training methods (Igloi, Zapotek, Pirie, ...). As far as I recall, which may well be wrong, those methods were based more or less entirely around short repetitions, whereas I had some 1000's in the mix; that is why I was asking for examples that other people have run. If anybody has anything from the Igloi-era, say, that is similar to what I did, I'd be very happy to read it.

Just to be clear, it was the 1000's that I was intending to be around threshold effort; the 400's were intended from the start to be faster, with them it was the more that I was able to keep up the pace with (mostly) 100m rest and the fact that I was running the 1000's considerably faster than expected that surprised me. There's not much evidence that I can give to support my assertion that I felt the 1000's to be around threshold effort, as for me this is just a feeling ('controlled hard'). But my heart rate was around 93% at the end of the 1000's; I ran a 10km a couple of months ago holding around 94.5 - 95.5%. Obviously that doesn't prove anything given how many variables are involved in heart rate, but it is what I have empirically. The other thing is that, as I wrote, I did the first pair of 1000's in 3:22 average (3:23 then 3:21), which was more like what I was expecting; the rest of the 1000's were not significantly harder, I just felt looser. Heart-rate wise, the first two were a touch lower than the 93% or so of the rest, but it's more that I felt able to put a bit more into it whilst feeling more or less equally controlled than that I dug deeper. For what it's worth, the heart rate on the 400's was slightly lower, around 91%.

But I would like to emphasise again that I can tell from my form that, even though the intensity of the 1000's felt around threshold, perhaps a touch harder, I could not run a 5km much faster if at all than that. Certainly I could not run a 5km anywhere near the pace of the 400's. Now it may well be that I cannot race as hard as other people, and that my 5km pace 'should' be faster given my fitness, but I do not think this explains the session.

(Of course none of this really matters ultimately; it was what it was, and time will tell what it 'means'. But this is a running forum, hence people might wish to discuss aspects of running regardless of whether it 'matters', or so I thought).

appreciate your sincerity, which was clear from the first post

with the rest you were taking, a fairly typical workout would be 8 x 1000 at 5k pace

a big workout would be 10 x 1000 at 5k pace

an absolute hero workout would be 13 x 1000 at 5k pace

i'd guess you're in ~16:40 5k shape

3-4 times a year i'm able to do hero workouts without it feeling especially difficult, but i never know when it's gonna happen (well actually i can tellafter first few steps the morning of when i get out of bed and feel insanely springy, but can't be planned ahead of time really)

Here is a LetsRun article about short rest interval training.