After years of running interval workouts way too hard, I pared things down to 2 "workouts" (along with steady mileage and regular strides): Tempos (20-30 minutes comfortably hard) and medium length repeats (2-3 mins w/2 mins rest) by effort up a slight (2-3% grade) hill. I dropped almost 2 minutes over 8k after ~6 months of this training.
If I had to pick one I would pick the hills, especially if I could shorten/lengthen the rest to make it more of a LT or V02 workout respectively.
What you described (2-3 minute repeats with 2 minute rest) are intervals.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills.
Lenny Leonard wrote:
What you described (2-3 minute repeats with 2 minute rest) are intervals.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills.
Not all intervals are created equal. I was doing 600s-1000s with 2 mins rest for years and didn't get anywhere. Finding the correct effort (ditching the track altogether did the trick for me) is key. Maybe the incline added some extra stimulus. It also might have more consistent mileage and not trying to squeeze in 2-3 hard efforts per week.
Lenny Leonard wrote:
What you described (2-3 minute repeats with 2 minute rest) are intervals.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills.
The hill repeats are intervals. The only value to them I always thought is that they gave you a mental break from doing intervals on the track.
There is no workout that gives you the "biggest bang for your buck". You can't quantify one workout. Its all part of year long formula. I don't know of any top coach other than Brad Hudson who believes hill repeats are a major part of developing improvement in 5000/10,000 track runners.
I just started running again after a 25 year break. Ran a blistering fast 30:39 5k after 3 weeks mostly to support a race I like. I'm in my 5th week now. Anyways since I'm still not in any shape I have found 300s with a 100 walk after to be my go to workout for the last 2 weeks. I do 16 to get close to 20 minutes of actual running.
I'm not sure any one workout is the best and I'll probably move up to 14 quarters next week.
Lenny Leonard wrote:
Most beginners run all of their runs as progression runs. That's why they plateau.
Nooooo......most all beginners run all their runs as positive split runs, going out too fast & limping home. Just the opposite.
There is a really good chance that you didn't improve because your intervals were so short in duration in some workouts that you were not getting enough work in during any given interval to get your body fully up to vo2max effort until late in the interval. I shoot for all of my intervals to be at least 3:00 long and no longer than 5:00; which is why I rarely run intervals of less than 1000m (although I do 200s and 400s from time to time early and late in a season, but I think of those as reps rather than intervals, and those are for fine tuning, not for major fitness improvements).
FitzyXC wrote:
Lenny Leonard wrote:What you described (2-3 minute repeats with 2 minute rest) are intervals.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills.
Not all intervals are created equal. I was doing 600s-1000s with 2 mins rest for years and didn't get anywhere. Finding the correct effort (ditching the track altogether did the trick for me) is key. Maybe the incline added some extra stimulus. It also might have more consistent mileage and not trying to squeeze in 2-3 hard efforts per week.
The Daily 10 miler.
Smoove wrote:
There is a really good chance that you didn't improve because your intervals were so short in duration in some workouts that you were not getting enough work in during any given interval to get your body fully up to vo2max effort until late in the interval.
I shoot for all of my intervals to be at least 3:00 long and no longer than 5:00; which is why I rarely run intervals of less than 1000m (although I do 200s and 400s from time to time early and late in a season, but I think of those as reps rather than intervals, and those are for fine tuning, not for major fitness improvements).
You are suggesting I didn't do anything longer than 1000m in college, which is incorrect. We did reps of up to 2 miles during XC, and did 1500s and 2ks along with a ton of 1000-1200m reps during track season. Perhaps we didn't do them enough (or, when we did do them, they were run too hard) but they were there.
And I said I DID improve when shortening things to no more than 2-3 minutes. So dropping longer reps certainly didn't hurt me all that much (though again, my improvement could have been due to any number of things including improved training environment).
Lenny Leonard wrote:
Intervals are not advanced. Your 14-year-old neice is probably doing them at practice right now.
There is a reason the fastest people is town are not usually the hobby jogger running 50 mpw in easy running, it's the high school kids doing 30mpw with intervals.
I think the fact that they are in HS running vs old men & housewives is a bigger factor than their training.
kmaclam wrote:
Lenny Leonard wrote:Most beginners run all of their runs as progression runs. That's why they plateau.
Nooooo......most all beginners run all their runs as positive split runs, going out too fast & limping home. Just the opposite.
This^
Like my old HS coach used to say "Going out fast and dying IS a race strategy. It's a dumb one, but it is an option available to you."
I was going off of your comment below that you did 600m to 1000m intervals with little benefit. You may have posted more detail in other posts, but I have to admit that I did not thread those together. I was just trying to give constructive feedback based on my experience and my readings; I was not intending to be a jerk.
"I was doing 600s-1000s with 2 mins rest for years and didn't get anywhere."
Hard long runs.
Either a 20-30min progression at the end of the run or Throw in a couple 1-2-3-2-1 on/off Pickups in the middle.
Builds up everything.
Hard long runs.
Either a 20-30min progression at the end of the run or Throw in a couple 1-2-3-2-1 on/off Pickups in the middle.
Builds up everything.
Ed Whitlock would advocate the errrryday slow jog.
VerminMeat wrote:
So if you are a recreational runner with limited time to spend training what workout provided the greatest return for time spent?
Long run
Tempo
Intervals
Hill reps
Fartlek
Progression run
It depends. If you always run on flat road, slow, then the best could be:
Fartlek. Up to some point includes intervals, progressions and tempo.
The most effective workout for me was 20 years ago.
A lap of 1400m with soft wand, flat, hill, downhill. I was doing Fartlek on this lap. All in.
Stupid question, but best is probably daily easy/progression runs with strides after. First half of run nice and easy, close really good second half.