Maybe he gave you more rest as to make the workout less strenuous. Instead of going faster on the reps, feel better and finish feeling strong, walk away with a good primer for more down the road.
I often do this with my athletes, we start with workouts designed just to get moving and touch paces with more rest between, then develop them into truly hard efforts.
This would explain why he thinks you should run 5km pace and you ran sub3km pace.
ukathleticscoach wrote:
Garbage, you can do much faster than 3km pace with this session. It is a crap session there is no excuse to use it
As some more knowledgeable people have already posted, a workout like this can have a place in an overall training plan. Obviously it's not a bread and butter 5k workout.
Really it doesn't matter if it's 3 minutes jog, or 5, or 10. The point is that you're getting full recovery. One km repeats are long enough that accruing fatigue between one isn't necessarily that important unless you're trying to simulate a race, which is something for later in the season.
I think workouts like these are great if you practice non-linear periodization (like you should). I would do stuff like this in the middle of the summer if I was training for fall cross. If done at slightly faster than 5k pace it will help you to maintain that top end, without taking much out of your legs while you're focusing on mileage. It might also be a workout to substitute for a more traditional 5k workout if you're coming off a really hard week or trying to be a little fresher for an upcoming weekend race.
some thoughts:
Check out Dave Moorcroft's 5 x 1000 all under 2:30 workout on page 10:
http://www.britishmilersclub.com/bmcnews/1999spring.pdf
His 3000 best was 7:32.79, so these were under 3000 pace.
klosic wrote:
so my coach sent me this training today, which i found to be very strange. I had never done these sets with such a long jog (~5 minutes) between.
he also told me i should be able to finish a 5k 2-3s over my average of this exercise.
my average was 3:05 with a 3:02 last one, but I think it would be very hard to believe i could finish a 15:35 5k.
Continuous jog? How fast? If he wrote it like "5 x 3 min on / 5 min off" would that still be strange?
too much revovert