I'm in the early speed phase of daniels workouts. The workouts are things like 400s at R pace. These workouts feel really hard where it's a struggle to make the R pace based on a recent 5k. i just wondered if they were supposed to be that hard or I am using the incorrect R pace. I think my concern is that the workout feels very anaerobic and i had thought that you wanted to save that anaerobic work until later on in the training.
You are suing te incorrect R pace. The pace should be more like 5k pace.
The training sources including books by Daniels and Pfitzinger are split as to whether the fastest speed work should come at the beginning or end of marathon training.
You should experiment and do what feels best and works best for you.
Which Daniels plan are you using; the A or the elite plan? Be sure to cut down the speed workouts if using the elite plan if you have not built the proper mileage base, say 90 plus miles per week.
happyfeet wrote:
I'm in the early speed phase of daniels workouts. The workouts are things like 400s at R pace. These workouts feel really hard where it's a struggle to make the R pace based on a recent 5k. i just wondered if they were supposed to be that hard or I am using the incorrect R pace. I think my concern is that the workout feels very anaerobic and i had thought that you wanted to save that anaerobic work until later on in the training.
Take more rest.
I agree with commonsensical.
I have used R pace workouts in the precomp phase with my athletes for several years. Don't worry about limiting the rest. Take as much rest as needed to run the subsequent workbout at the same pace as the previous one. These workouts are important to develop the muscle strength and coordination to efficiently run at race pace.
There is some anaerobic component to these workouts to be sure, but training the anaerobic system is not the focus. It's similar to doing long hill repeats. In fact, because our track is snow covered most of the winter, we often do hill repeats at R "effort" on days Daniels calls for 400R in the precomp phase.
You didn't say how old you were, but if you're an adult that normally races 5k and up I think you will find R pace (which is normally 1500m pace) to feel hard. On the other hand if you're a high school student who races 800/1500 in the winter/spring and the 5k just in the fall, I think you will find R pace to be quite "doable" with sufficient rest.
As your body learns to fire the different muscle groups efficiently, I think you will find these R pace workouts to get easier as well. Don't start running them faster when this happens. Either cut the rest a but or just enjoy the fact that you're getting better and psychologically get ready for the much more intense workouts to come in the next phase.
As everyone says: take loads of rest. Full recoveries and that means really full, not just how much time some chart says or what you think ought to be full enough.
I seem to get far more out of this type of workout (in terms of race results) than VO2 intervals, including the one season where I followed Daniels 5-15k training pretty faithfully.
Being old and slow I'll do either all 200m in a session or mostly 200 with a couple 400. My 400 R pace is around, oh, something like 1:20-1:25 and that seems long enough to be lactic and partially defeat the purpose of the workout as I understand it. My feeling is (see also Greg McMillan's chapter on alactic speed training in Run Strong, IMO a good supplement to Daniels R training) you want to keep these under about a minute.
I generally jog the distance for recovery, so it's 200 after a 200, etc. I'll stretch the runs to 800, always at the same pace, but generally 200s and 400s. Full recovery.
One thing I do is finish with 2 400s, and keep the pace through the fist 200 of each and then go all out for the final 200. That's easy to do on the last one, because it's the last one. But on the penultimate one, I'm fine through 300 and then really have to concentrate to maintain through the finish. Mentally or physically, I think of it as an easy way to add a little pop to the end of races.
We do reps year-round where I coach, and I've found that we get more out of 200s than any longer repetition, primarily because it's short enough that it's very easy to recover from each one. You're looking for efficiency and comfort at pace and to be able to repeat each one with excellent form, so you don't want to have to work so hard that your form breaks down.
We save 400s at rep pace (or faster) for later in track season, just before our championship phase, and those are mainly for 800/1600 types.