Horizon wrote:
V,
If you don't mind me asking, what level do you coach at?
How does speed Dev look for 10k runners vs 1500 runners? What's different?
I don't mind at all, I am fortunate enough to be coaching at the Division 1 level.
Overall it looks the same when we're talking about Speed Development. Some of the other types of "Speed Work" (a term that I really hate because of how loosely its used. Typically people refer to anything faster than race pace as "speed work" and that's just too unspecific) such as anaerobic capacity/power, speed endurance, or lactate tolerance may be expressed differently though. I'll break them down a bit now to explain what I mean.
Speed Development
This and acceleration development are the same for 1500m runners, 10k runners, and 60m runners. Granted sprinters do some additional little things that we don't the bulk of it is the same. The reason being is that the alactic (P-Cr) system is narrow and, according to many, static in its range. Alactic sprints last about 7 seconds and even people who believe that it can be extended never say it lasts longer than 8 so individual variance is small across pretty much everyone. Because of that we have to follow the rules that sprinters learned long ago.
We have to get to top speed to work on speed development right? that means we need to run for at least 40m for most people. But we also know that this alactic system is only viable for a max of 7 (maybe 8) seconds. This means we're limited to roughly 3 seconds of time at top speed. I have mentioned here a few times that 80m is the ceiling I use for reps, in reality most distance runners don't have the accelerative power or coordination to make true use of those last 10-15m. In fact 80m is the start of speed endurance which shifts to a new energy system. All that being said, 60m sprints are my bread and butter for speed development, but I like 80's because you "feel" them more. It is a great tool to start making your speed development more functional and reduce any real slowdown.
Speed Endurance
This is what falls after Speed Development in my eyes. The accepted range that I know of is between 80-150m and I agree with this enough to not argue it though the case can be made for 80-200m I suppose. Here we still use long recoveries and the speeds are done as fast as you can. These are the most demanding workouts in terms of coordination (sprinting is a skill as much as anything else in sport). I use volumes in the neighborhood of 800-1200m usually making 6-8x150m appropriate but honestly after 6 you're not likely to be running as smooth or reflexively. Again be very generous on recoveries, 3 minutes is too short, 4-8 minutes is fair and people often do more by breaking them up into sets.
As I mentioned these break into a different energy system called the anaerobic glycolytic system. This is the one that produces lactic acid.
[my next soap box talk, lactic acid is very misunderstood by a lot of people. Many articles will vilify it one week then say "oh wait its a fuel source" and be back on its good side. Here's what I think you should know: Lactic acid is the combination of Lactate and an acid (H+). Lactate triggers tons of beneficial hormones that help you recover (good) but is also a fairly large molecule that can eventualy take up too much space within a cell making enzymatic function less efficient (bad). Acid is what makes your legs burn (not always fun) and in high concentrations will inhibit aerobic development (bad). This happens from the acidity "burning" capillary beds which are meant to transport more oxygen to muscles, as well as being thought to cause muscle soreness. I've never actually seen any research on that specifically so I won't assert that part too hard. Anecdotally its not off base though. Acid also changes blood pH causing the problems we mentioned but also makes your cells operate in a less ideal climate to function. So those times when you feel burnt out, it may very well be due to you lowering your blood pH too far and going through what called, "acidosis." An important point however is that it will improve your buffering capacity, this means that your body tries to protect itself by producing buffers within your blood to better resist those pH changes so that, in a race, that burning doesn't make you slow down as much. All of these things pertain not just to speed endurance but to ANY kind of anaerobic effort. The reason we don't talk about it with 10k training is that the paces for a 10k are only slightly anaerobic (about 8%) so even a very hard effort you only have so much potential for high levels of acidity throughout the duration of the workout. End soap box]
So getting back to it, the levels of acidity produced are worth keeping an eye on here. We put in long recoveries so the overall buildup isn't massive but you should reserve speed endurance for later in the season when you have very solid speed established and likely have some anaerobic capacity under your belt. And this kind of work really fries your nervous system, use it when needed but not excessively.
Anaerobic Capacity/Power
Here is where murky water begins because coaches use this term for (sometimes) slightly different things. I'm going to tell you how I look at it and you can decide where it fits within things for you and your program. Anything with "capacity" in the name refers to volume in some respect. Base work for a distance runner for instance is fair to call Aerobic Capacity. I dislike the term power used here but I listed it because I've seen them used here interchangeably, but I will likely always refer to it as capacity.
In my eyes the difference between this and speed endurance is that with anaerobic capacity we aren't going flat-out. we are going fast but its more analogous to 400m-600m race pace. You are clearly going fast, but its somewhat more manageable (and by extension less neuromuscularly demanding). I tend to stay between 100-200m for my reps here but recovery is a bit less and you can do them more often. 12x100m with 300m jog recovery is one I use to transition speed development into more functional sprinting. But people have used 200's at the end of a session quite a lot as well.
I'll also note that some even view 1500m work as anaerobic capacity because it is a decent amount anaerobic and it does have high volume. It doesn't fit with the progression that I use so I would suggest always treating these as very different entities.
I do these workouts after speed development but before speed endurance. They teach you to run fast while building up a bit of acidity without going overboard. Plus the speeds are slightly less than speed endurance so it tends to be a good stepping stone that speed endurance workouts marry together.
Lactate Tolerance
These are the ones that really hit hard. The goal here is to sprint hard enough and long enough to build up lactic acid to really trigger your body to develop better buffering capacity. These are usually regarded as "peaking" workouts especially for distance runners. The very high levels of Acidity mean that doing this too often can cause pH drops that you don't bounce back from in time. Some coaches consider this the part where athletes get "stale" or peak too early. A couple of these workouts sharpen the knife just fine so don't go overboard especially as a long distance runner.
These workouts might be something like 3x500m with 3 minute recovery. Average as fast as you can over all 3 reps. This that are longer, still fast, and don't offer enough recovery to get the burning all the way out of your legs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's different?
We took the long way around the question but I think that stuff is important to understand on a general level before getting into the differences (plus I like talking shop).
Everything that I mentioned here I genuinely believe is appropriate across all of the distance events. But if George Orwell was a track coach he'd say that, across all events this is appropriate, but across the middle-distance events it is more appropriate. What I mean is that a 1500m runner would devote more time to this. I use a 10-12 day cycle and year round you are bound to see 2 of these per cycle, my 5k/10k guys probably only see 1 depending on the time of year. They need to know how to deal with lactic acid too, but for them its far more important to clear acidity (through lactate threshold) than it is to buffer acidity like we see in the shorter events.
Your specific endurance work will be a bigger factor here. Now you might decide to add something like anaerobic capacity to the end of a 10k workout to simulate having to run hard at the end of a race, that's totally appropriate if done at the right time of the season. But I suppose at the end of the day I'm not suggesting that they are very different, its just that for the 10k you need to budget your workout time appropriately to make sure that you're still getting in the aerobic work. This may be a very good time to make a morning workout something like a tempo and the evening session something with anaerobic capacity. Is it perfect? No, but we have schedules and deadlines so sometimes we have to play the hand dealt to us.