Instead of a tempo our coach had us do this .Is he crazy.

perfectly legitimate. I rarely do sustained tempos with my college team anymore for three reasons.

1) hard to find a suitable place to run then near my institution.

2)5k/10k athletes run them too hard, and tend to race them.

3) Freshmen and mile runners have the opposite problem and can't concentrate and maintain pace over 3 to 8 miles.

cruise intervals like this have worked out well for us the past few years. we'll tempo intervals from 400m all the way to 2 miles.

90 seconds is a lot of rest in between, but if you jog briskly enough to keep your HR from getting to low that I don't think it matters.

This is an effective workout as long as you felt it. Let's not make this running thing to complicated. If you stood around looking confused at the end - then you did nothing and your coach is not doing his job. If you were slumped, gasping for air then maybe this tempo style workout was a little too hard, however this is dependent of where you are in your training season.

If your coach threw 6 x 1k at you earlier this week then he was probably trying to get some hard running (maximize training opportunity) but not overtax you. Therefore the recovery in the workout may be a subjective component evaluated specifically to the individual. Perhaps it was too long for you but maybe your teammates did not recover quite as quickly from the intervals earlier this week and the longer recovery was helping them through. It was cited earlier these are cruise intervals which is correct. Daniels recommends these for 5k/10k'ers. Increased volume to a min of 4 and max of 6 miles would be ideal but again it depends how intense your earlier workout was this week and where you are in your training cycle. Many variables to evaluate.

I'd say trust your coach until his training gets your burnt or injured. Then blame him for everything and accept no accountability, that's the American way.

Never heard the term cruise intervals but it sounds like a good name for it.

Medium effort workouts have a purpose if you had a hard workout in the week and will have a long run at the end of the week with easy runs between.

Something like that actually leaves your legs feeling pretty good afterwards, leaves some run in them.

Easy runs are necessary but you don't get any running rhythm out of them.

Sounds like a good Thursday workout in between a hard Tuesday and hard Saturday workout.

I think "cruise intervals" comes from Jack Daniels.

I learned of the term/workout from his book.

There is a miss conception about tempos. Tempos are almost always close to race like effort. This was more of a Lactic threshold type of workout, and it is a pretty good one. I would have done 8 or 10 reps, but it is great work. The recovery is fine if it isn't a slog and after the rep, you just slip into gen run pace.

Dave Smith includes in his programme a serious of workouts of 800m repeats with a 200m jog recovery to prep for the cross country season. In July for example the workout would be 10-12 x 800m in 2.30 with a 200m jog recovery and the other 'workout' for the week would be 60 minutes steady running followed by 10 x 200m in 30-31 with 200m jog recovery. This would progress to 10 x Mile in 5.10 down to 4.50 on a trail, and then 5 x Mile in 4.50 down to 4.10-4.20 on cros country.

A typical summer week for a sophomore (so 1 full cycle of the programme)

Monday - AM. 70 minutes steady

Monday - PM. Core exercises, 35 minutes easy, strides

Tuesday - AM. 10-12 x 800m in 2.30 with 200m jog recovery, with a warm up of 35 minutes and a cool down of 35 minutes.

Tuesday - PM. SAQ drills, 35 minutes easy, strides

Wednesday - AM. 90 minutes steady 'medium long run'

Wednesday - PM. Leg strengthening/balance work, 35 minutes easy, strides

Thursday - AM. 60 minutes steady

Thursday - PM. SAQ drills, 35 minutes easy, strides

Friday - AM. 60 minutes steady, 10 x 200m in 30-31 with 200m jog recovery

Saturday - AM. 35 minutes easy, strides

Sunday - AM. 2 hours steady

Basically your coach is probably building a programme so you can achieve the glamour workouts that you believe you should be doing. So stick with it, do the workout. By being consistant you'll progress anyway, everyday that your run at your age you get better anyway!

Tempo volume us reduced by recovery

Tempo should mean lactate threshold and you drop off that after every recovery especially in 800m reps too short for tempo training. Better to do 5 mins reps at tempo pace.

The point of having breaks in tempo training us to increase volume. You may as well have just done 20 mins at tempo pace without rest intervals.

It will still make you fitter whatever the session you did is called

the real deal wrote:

Why have there been so many hs/college kids on here complaining about perfectly legitimate workouts lately? I remember a couple of weeks ago some kid called his coach an idiot for telling him not to look at his watch during a tempo run.

It's the coaches, coming on here posing as their runners, asking for advice in and from a runners perspective.

Crowd sourcing responses to workouts.

That's my opinion.

Is my coach crazy wrote:

So he said instead of a Tuesday tempo we will do 6x 1/2 mile reps at tempo effort with a 1:30 easy jog between .He said guys I want you to be keep it where you can talk.He said since my 5k goal is 16 flat I want them 2:47 to 2:43 you can run the last one in like 2:38.I want this to feel hard but not like a drop dead workout.It felt easy though the road was kinda messed up any way.We did it on a 1/2 mile loop.Then we did 4 fast 150s a 5k race effort.Is my coach a idiot or is there a purpose to this?

All looks legit except for the "4 fast 150s at 5k pace."

Those won't be fast 150ies.

Good idea for a workout