better off without intervals??

Well if we were to think of distance running as being primarily a result of red blood cells (RBCs), then that would tell us that 3 months of aerobic work are the most important ingredient to distance running success. As this pertains to seasons and racing it makes sense then that a guy doing huge base mileage in the offseason might start the season with monster RBCs and do well the first few weeks after a few faster workouts. The guy who hardly did anything in the offseason will find that his RBCs improve over the next few months of in-season training.

Wise coaches will do only moderate training the first month or so of the season so as to give the athletes a rest who crushed it in the offseason and simultaneously acclimate the lazier ones to the increased training. Both should peak together after a couple of months in the same cycle.

he stimulated plenty of fast twitch muscle fibers and got interval like training running up sand dunes....the heart does not know whether you are on sand or a track..just knows it needs to pump faster--much faster!

Somewhere in your workouts you need to get some race pace running in. It is that simple. The only way to do this is with repeats with rest intervals. This is certainly true for middle distance runners.

You also have to allow time for adaptation and recovery. If you suddenly added intervals to your training plan, of course your race times would suffer. It takes me months to start to feel adapted to training and ready to race well.

Please give me an example of a good miler that did not do intervals/repeats.

The best way to incorporate intervals is to gradually build up the volume and intensity.

Off season.

8 x 200 at mile pace, 1 min recovery

Pre season:

8 X 200 at mile pace, 30 second recovery

Early season

6X 400 at mile pace, 1 min recovery

Mid season

10 x 400, 1 min recovery

or 3 x 800 4 min recovery, 5X 200

peak season:

2 X (400, 600m,400m,200m )

or 6 x 200 faster than goal

or 4 x600m, 4 X 200

If you don't want to run intervals, then you could run a mile time trial every other day and see how far that gets you.

Im doing this whole less intervals and more high end aerobic running experiment on myself this summer. I have always done intervals for training because my coach was crazy about them. In the grand scheme of things, my shorter times are much better than my longer distance times, and I'm trying to even this out a little bit as I think I have a lot of potential if I up my endurance.

Anyways, during the off seasons I kinda do my own thing and coach myself, and its during these periods that I end up feeling the strongest, then when I get back to school and get bombarded with intervals, I tend to stagnate. I don't get slower, but I do not get much faster. At least not for 3k and up

So this summer I'm doing a lot of miles and tempos, and I'll let you know how it works. I'm pretty confident I'll come into the season in the best shape of my life.

Going from longs runs, temp runs over 3-5km, hill repeats over 200-300m with fun runs, speed play and cross country to intervals was like night and day. Within a few weeks my 800/1500m times went from 4.45 to 4.20 and 800m times from 2.16 to 2.04 in a matter of weeks on bumpy grass track. 4.02/157 on synthetic as turned out to be. Why was the improvement so rapid? It wasnt so much the increase in aerobic capacity they promoted/developed but clearly two other things. A much more efficient rhythm, as the speeds were much higher, therefore lower energy demand and secondly better lactate tolerance and better ability to maintain rhythm with higher level of lactate. Not sure how this relates to distance events though because I never did them while I ran intervals. I would think if a distance runner is not responding to intervals they are not doing them fast enough because the recovery may be to short.

Rbyrne wrote:

he stimulated plenty of fast twitch muscle fibers and got interval like training running up sand dunes....the heart does not know whether you are on sand or a track..just knows it needs to pump faster--much faster!

I've done fine with hill reps and with unstructured fartlek.

I ran my best on only one interval and one AT-type tempo run per week. Intervals were too much CNS fatigue with that much frequency on top of high mileage.

Good stuff here. I'll share my daughter's story; HS runner, been running three years.

The lat two summers she increased mileage and did mostly easy and threshold stuff with a weekly speed maintenance session (100-150 fast, with good recovery).

Her coach likes 3K to 5K pace intervals and she ran very well early in the season. However, after 4-5 weeks of 800's to 1200's repeats with short recovery her race times began to slow and by November she was fried. Two seasons that ended poorly.

This past track season she followed a similar build up but asked her coach to train her like an 800 meter runner. Instead of long reps she ran short fast reps (200-300) with good rest, she raced well and set PR's at 800 and 1600. Unfortunately she was not able to hold that form for a full 10 weeks but that is a different issue.

So the verdict is that for her a build up of good millage and threshold and sub-threshold work followed by a small amount of fast reps with plenty of rest produced good results.

3K and 5K pace work just seems wear her out. Perhaps because you can do a large amount of such work and the metabolic waste just builds up.

Are some runners.... wrote:

I just read a quote from the coach of recent NCAA 10K champ Molly Seidel, who said, “She thrives on tempo and threshold type of work....Interval training hasn’t really panned out for her.” Does this mean she is better off NOT running intervals (400's, 1000's, etc)? I ask because I've coached HS distance runners for 2 years and I've got a runner who does the off-season training, comes into the season in better shape than everyone else, but then doesn't improve like the other over the season of races and interval workouts, to the point where the other kids catch up to him by the end of the season. I know some runners respond better to different types of training, but are some runners really better off not doing intervals (just long runs, tempo runs, threshold runs)?

She comes into the season in better shape and then doesn't improve as much?

Why do you think that improvement is constant? They are HS runners. They have limits to their ability. If she is entering the season in better shape, I hope you don't subject her to the same workouts as the others? Think yourself lucky you have an athlete that can work on here own.

Now all you have to do is work out how you can benefit her improvement. This note of yours is like a confession..

2 X Around wrote:Somewhere in your workouts you need to get some race pace running in. It is that simple. The only way to do this is with repeats with rest intervals. This is certainly true for middle distance runners.

It's not necessarily true for 10k runners. Specific training is usually defined as anything within 5% of race pace. So a great, specific workout for a 10k runner could be a 4.5 mile tempo, starting at 95% of race pace and working up to 102%.

I also once knew a very good 5k runner whose most specific workouts were continuous runs at 5k pace. He did intervals early, but then he'd do a 4 week progression starting at 6 laps, working up to 9 laps. He said that if he could hit his race pace for 9 laps, with enough control to absolutely know he was going on pace, then he was confident that in a race he could get the last 1400 meters by digging deep and accumulating tons of oxygen debt.

In general, it seems that slow twitch people tend to have a bit more success by emphasizing tempos, while fast twitch runners do a bit better emphasizing intervals.

But as others have noted, there are an infinite variety of intervals. A lot of people, when they say they don't do well with intervals, seem to be talking about stuff like the classic 12x400 high school workouts where you get a pretty substantial change in blood ph. But intervals can be just about anything.

Just a few examples: My hardest, most specific marathon workout was 5x3 miles at MP with a .5 mile recovery jog, 3 mile warmup and 3 mile cooldown. Same thing with tempos. I've never done many tempos. My LT paced runs are usually 3x2 miles. I've also done 9xmile at LT with 60 seconds recovery. Sometimes I do an hour of 15 seconds at roughly 1-mile race pace, followed by 45 seconds at long run pace. My HR average for such a workout is around what a marathon pace run would be. I don't accumulate oxygen debt, I get a good aerobic stimulus, and I get some turnover.

That's a really good point and I do think you're right; generally we think of interval training as stuff that has you breathing pretty hard for fairly short stretches of time. But you can make almost anything into intervals. In the early 60s Ernst van Aaken had a teenage runner who was running maybe a hair under 9:00 for 3,000 meters. One of the workouts EvA had the kid do was 5 x 3km somewhere between 11 and 13 minutes each with a walk between repeats.

But how do you define tempos?

Tempo is quite an ambiguous word. You can get different answer as to what a tempo run is from different people.

Other than that, I totally agree with you, especially on the variety of intervals.

Let me know when she sets a world record.

All true elite runners do intervals

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Let me know when she sets a world record.

All true elite runners do intervals

Ron Clarke and the guys who trained with him didn't. Neither did Clayton nor Bill Adcocks. All old examples, sure, but most westerners today would kill to run the times they did.

interesting thread and there are some more about this topic here on letsrun.

i have realized that the average pace of a good continuous tempo run is not that bad compared to an interval session (considering the total volume of recovery jogs plus the interval volume).

I'm not a fan of repetitions (intervals are the rest between reps) but if we do them its with active recovery...you don't get to stand around and rest during races!

You can see repetition trained athletes sag in the 3rd quarter of a mile as they rest up for their last rep.

I'd agree with this except to say that it's all about timing. All training is worthwhile however it's a matter of doing the different types of workouts at the correct time in your buildup. Your typical week during your base training should be vastly different from a typical week closer to your race peak. You can't just say that every week of the year should contain 1 tempo workout, 1 short interval workout and 1 long interval workout. That's silly. It's the same with the rest between intervals and total volume of a workout, these should also vary as you progress through your buildup.

There is not 1 correct answer as we all respond uniquely to different types of training. However there are plenty of incorrect ways to train. Doing hard mile repeats with short recovery during your base season or even early season is not something that I would personally recommend. I believe these types of workouts take too much out of you mentally and physically if you are not ready for them. However later in the buildup when you are ready to nail this workout, it makes total sense but too much of any type of training (with the exception of easy runs) too soon can lead you to peak at the wrong time or become stale mid season.

Different types of workouts all have a place in your buildup. You just need to figure out how much of each and when to include them into your workouts to get maximal benefit from your racing.

sorry for my imprecise terms. if the total time of a typical interval session like 6x4mins/2mins recovery jog (ended after the last 4mins of hard running) is 34mins, i just compare the total distance of this session with the distance of a 34mins continuous run at a good clip. that being said i am sceptic of the significance of repetitions. perhaps hard tempos/progression runs and a few strides sometimes arent that bad.