Roughly how long does it take for a week of hard interval workouts to positively effect on fitness? One week after? Two weeks?
Basically what I'm asking is, if I am training to run 5K race (sub 15:00) and I normally run 40-50 mpw, how many days before the race should I do my hardest interval session?
Discuss..
TrainingEffect wrote:
Roughly how long does it take for a week of hard interval workouts to positively effect on fitness? One week after? Two weeks?
Basically what I'm asking is, if I am training to run 5K race (sub 15:00) and I normally run 40-50 mpw, how many days before the race should I do my hardest interval session?
Discuss..
If you want a general suggestion, 7 days.
I was thinking between 15 days and 10 days before the race should the be most intense workouts, while lowing the mileage. Is that too close or far from race day to do the hardest workouts?
lowering*
10 days has been the opinion over the years on all the other threads on this subject.
they went over this at nuseum on the oatmeal thred.
According to Joe Vigil & Scott Christensen, it takes about 3 weeks to achieve FULL adaptation.
In both of their programs, they work with the same style workout for three weeks before "moving on" (via time or variation in workout).
Vigil uses Mile Repeats in this way.
Christensen uses VO2 Max workouts in this way.
details. Do you have one 5k race? Is it part of a season of 5k races? an xc season?
I thought two weeks was the standard for tapering.
TrainingEffect wrote:
Roughly how long does it take for a week of hard interval workouts to positively effect on fitness? One week after? Two weeks?
Basically what I'm asking is, if I am training to run 5K race (sub 15:00) and I normally run 40-50 mpw, how many days before the race should I do my hardest interval session?
Discuss..
There is no number that anyone can give that would be reliable. You could do a very hard workout and be fully recovered in less than 24 hours, or another time you might need several days. It depends on so many factors.
jono wrote:
You could do a very hard workout and be fully recovered in less than 24 hours, or another time you might need several days.
Bullsh!t.
jono wrote:
TrainingEffect wrote:Roughly how long does it take for a week of hard interval workouts to positively effect on fitness? One week after? Two weeks?
Basically what I'm asking is, if I am training to run 5K race (sub 15:00) and I normally run 40-50 mpw, how many days before the race should I do my hardest interval session?
Discuss..
There is no number that anyone can give that would be reliable. You could do a very hard workout and be fully recovered in less than 24 hours, or another time you might need several days. It depends on so many factors.
I think we're talking about 2 things. One is recovering, the other is adaptation/benefit from the workout.
prove it wrote:
jono wrote:You could do a very hard workout and be fully recovered in less than 24 hours, or another time you might need several days.
Bullsh!t.
It's not bullshit, you're just ignorant. I once won 4 races in 5 days. How do you think I prepared for that?
Did you PR in every race too? If you were truly fully recovered, you should have...
By your rationale, I should have PR'd in almost every race.
You can determine this by experiment pretty quickly.
Do a hard workout at a pace relevant to your event. Run easy each day afterwards and do whatever else benefits recovery - stretch, mobility, strides, whatever . Note the first day when you feel springy and full of energy. Say it's 3 days later...if so, you have supercompensated and are fitter than you were before.
MAYBE an absolute killer workout ten days before, followed by a week of easing up, will work well. But maybe you'd do equally well or better with three 'normally hard' workouts (e.g. Wed-Sat-Wed for a Saturday race). Or with a race at a similar distance a week before.
The important things is that each time you do a quality session (or race) in the last few weeks, you let your body fully recover and adapt before the next one. You are not (at this stage) trying to get used to more volume in a week, unless you are training to do 3 races in 4 days or some such. And you don't want to have multiple overlapping kinds of fatigue all complicating the picture.
Personally, I'm getting old and need 2-3 easy days between hard workouts. My last session before a race will probably be 'under distance and faster', 3 days before. But I wouldn't hold back on that last session - I'd be trying to get fitter from it.
eurodonkey wrote:
You can determine this by experiment pretty quickly.
Do a hard workout at a pace relevant to your event. Run easy each day afterwards and do whatever else benefits recovery - stretch, mobility, strides, whatever . Note the first day when you feel springy and full of energy. Say it's 3 days later...if so, you have supercompensated and are fitter than you were before
You're way off. You may feel springy after 3 days, but it still takes up to 12 days for fast twitch muscles to supercompensate. There's no one-to-one relationship there. Rather to the contrary. If you feel springy for a long event, you've probably lost some endurance.
I have never heard this before. Olbrecht's supercompensation chart seemed to indicate that supercompensation would not take longer than a few days. From where did you get this info?
not so fast... wrote:
You're way off. You may feel springy after 3 days, but it still takes up to 12 days for fast twitch muscles to supercompensate. There's no one-to-one relationship there. Rather to the contrary. If you feel springy for a long event, you've probably lost some endurance.
not so fast... wrote:
You're way off. You may feel springy after 3 days, but it still takes up to 12 days for fast twitch muscles to supercompensate. There's no one-to-one relationship there. Rather to the contrary. If you feel springy for a long event, you've probably lost some endurance.
12 days to supercompensate? Really? Who says?
There is no such thing as a definite time requirement to recover. It depends on so many factors.
And who says that hard training will lead to a supercompenstaion anyway? That only applies when you are lacking some aspect of fitness.
markeroon wrote:
I have never heard this before. Olbrecht's supercompensation chart seemed to indicate that supercompensation would not take longer than a few days. From where did you get this info?
not so fast... wrote:You're way off. You may feel springy after 3 days, but it still takes up to 12 days for fast twitch muscles to supercompensate. There's no one-to-one relationship there. Rather to the contrary. If you feel springy for a long event, you've probably lost some endurance.
From the Runner's world book of training mythology.