I don't understand jog recoveries

Libertarian vegan wrote:

Recovery jogs do three main things:

One. It clears out lactate acid which speeds up recovery

Two. Increases aerobic capacity by doing more miles which increases endurance and fitness

Three. Easy miles teaches you to run relax and easy which decreases the amount of wasted energy from being tight when you run.

PLEASE either use lactic acid or lactate, not "lactate acid".

COACH J.S å ä ö wrote:

*stipe wrote:

Smoove, so you would not jog between cruise intervals?

One can choose to either jog or walk easy between interval reps. Both ways are equal. Standing rest... NO !

I prefer walking easy between because it`s faster down to 120 bpm that is the preferable heartrate rest level.

What is magical about 120 bpm? Why should it be the same HR for every person?

Luv2Run wrote:

COACH J.S å ä ö wrote:

One can choose to either jog or walk easy between interval reps. Both ways are equal. Standing rest... NO !

I prefer walking easy between because it`s faster down to 120 bpm that is the preferable heartrate rest level.

What is magical about 120 bpm? Why should it be the same HR for every person?

He has taken the number from Gerschler. Basing training on 1930s exercise science seems a bit strange.

via John Kellogg:

"Should the recovery periods during VO2 max workouts be spent standing? Walking? Jogging? Some combination of these?

This depends in part on the length of the recovery periods, which depends in turn on the length of the work bouts. Standing rests are almost never productive. Jogging during the rest periods is usually preferable, as this keeps the muscles warm and the circulatory system active (which allows for greater re-uptake of blood lactate), but short reps may be more intense (faster),

requiring a more passive recovery (all walking or some walking and some jogging) to keep muscle lactate at manageable levels. This is particularly true the first time a session involving a pace faster than vVO2 max is attempted. As lactate metabolism improves during the season, the entire recovery period can be spent jogging (per Veronique Billat's recommendations) even

during these faster sessions."

There are some very good points made in this thread. This is why I still come to letsrun. I'd like to add a few.

For practical purposeses, standing recoveries are easier to manage with large groups of kids. When I first started coaching, I had smaller teams and could manage to get their times recorded as they finished and headed into their recovery jogs. As my teams have grown, it's been harder and harder to accurately record workout times without actually having the kid call the time back out. Standing (or walking around in circles) recovery allows me to do this.

One of the things I've been thinking about trying to figure out a way to do for this upcoming season is manage to get splits down AND have the kids jog their recoveries.

There is another point that has been made, to which I would like to add. A number of times it's been said on this thread that jogging the recovery keeps the body closer to a state of high energy output so that when the subsequent work interval is started, the body is closer to getting back to VO2 max (or whatever state you want it to get to). I'd like to add that, depending on which event the athlete is training for, differing recoveries can serve different purposes. If an athlete does a longer standing recovery and his body systems return closer to a resting state, his body will return to more of a resting state and blood pH will return closer to normal values. This will allow the athlete to "feel better" at the start of each workbout (as previously stated). However, this will cause each workbout to derive more energy from anaerobic sources. Since it takes some time (up to 2 minutes) for your body to go from a resting state to a state of maximal oxygen uptake, early in the workbout, O2 delivery will be less than optimal and your body will have to make up the difference through anaerobic sources.

So, while we recognize that a workout like 5 x 1k @ 3k pace provides a strong aerobic stimulus, by varying the rest and rest modality, the workout can be adapted for the 800-1500 runner or the 3k + runner. If the athlete were to take 4-5 minutes recovery, a good portion of the time spent running would be spent running at less than optimal O2 uptake and a greater percentage of the energy for that workbout would be coming from anaerobic sources. This session would be more specific for a mid distance runner (and may better suit the mid distance runner's mentality as well). While a session of 5 x 1k @ 3k pace with only 2-3 minutes recovery would more closely mimic the demands of a 3k + race where the body is forced to work at near maximal for longer periods of time and less of the overall energy would be coming from anaerobic sources.

The workout with longer, standing recoveries might feel easier, but the athlete would produce more total energy from anaerobic sources while the workout with shorter, jogging recoveries would probably feel harder and cause the athlete's blood lactate to peak at a higher value by the end of the session, but derive a greater amount of energy from aeroic sources.

I hope this makes sense, I have on eye on my class taking a test right now (ironically it's on the metabolic pathways).

Coach B,

regarding recording their times....I would say stick with the jogging recoveries as these are way more important than getting everyone's workout times recorded. I know coaches like to have these but truth is if is meaningful to the athlete they will remember them. Athletes that don't remember - just don't operate that way...they are focusing on different things (which is fine)- maybe just trying to stay up with a teammate or focusing on how they feel.

you could also videotape the workout and go back and get the splits later

or figure out a way to have each athlete quickly record their own time on a poster board or clipboard (you would need multiple boards for this to work).

coach B - i applaud your pragmatism, good luck with your large group! as a former athlete i know it can be like herding cats, good luck!

I'd also like to follow up on the concept of jogging the recoveries serving to supplement the aerobic training or running volume of the workout.

I'll use one of my girls as an example. I'm choosing this girl simply because the numbers balance out pretty well for what I want to illustrate. She has a 5k cross country pr of 19:53 and a 1600 pr of 5:29. She is going into her senior track season and wants to run under 5:20, a reasonable goal to be sure. One of the things we want to work on this off season is being comfortable at race pace. Right now, we're just re-establishing total training volume (she'll probably progress to around 45mpw). We're almost there. Within a week or 2, she'll start adding some fast strides in a couple time a week. When we return from Christmas break, I'd like to start in with some 200m reps at goal pace (40 seconds).

Initially, the purpose of the 200s will be nothing more than to establish biomechanical efficiency and confidence at race pace. She might do: 4 mile easy run, change to flats, 10 x 200 @ 40 with an easy walk recovery, making sure she is not carrying fatigue forward to the next rep. Then maybe a 1 mile cool down. Added volume of jog = 0, added aerobic stimulus = 0.

After one or two of those sessions, we might add a 200m easy jog to the session. Added volume 2000m, added aerobic stimulus, very little.

After one or two of those sessions, we might try to speed up the recovery jog. Added volume 2000m, added aerobic stimulus, increasing

Maybe by mid February, she can do the workout mentioned above with the recovery jog right at 1 minute. This means she would be averaging 1:40 per lap (6:40 mile pace, which matches up fairly well with her threshold pace). By this point, the workout has become very aerobically challenging.

Currently, her easy run pace is slightly slower than 8 min per mile, so as mentioned earlier in the thread, by the time she got to being able to do the session with only a 1 minute 200m recovery, she would be doing a session that did not allow her to fully recovery from the previous rep.

Where is the point at which the recovery is no longer a recovery but an added training stimulus? I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that most of my kids who had lots of individual success jogged their recoveries, so I'm trying to figure out a way to get back to that.

Jog slowly and focus on form, mindful of all of the sensations and signals the body is sending out. Strengthen the neuronal pathways at the end of the runs. Woo Saaah!

Interestingly, there has been no mention of the psychological benefits. Keep moving the entire workout! When you want to stop, you keep jogging. Good mental preparation for future difficult workouts as well as important races.

North Coach wrote:

Interestingly, there has been no mention of the psychological benefits. Keep moving the entire workout! When you want to stop, you keep jogging. Good mental preparation for future difficult workouts as well as important races.

No, it was mentioned on the last page.

My high school coach always had us walk the recoveries. His logic was that we could run the intervals harder if we tool long rest. We'd actually walk the same distance as the interval. Workouts took a long time.

When I got to college the standard recovery was 1/2 the distance of the work interval. I blew up in numerous workouts before I figured out how to run them. I was so used to having super long recoveries that anything actually near race pace felt really slow. This does not mean that we didn't sometimes make those jog recoveries, reeeeaaaaallllly slow.

It did make me feel like much more of a bad ass knowing that I was doing the workout and running the whole time.

I am in my 60s and have been running seriously for almost 50 years.

I find that my muscles feel stiff and range of motion is reduced if I stand around or just walk slowly during the recovery. Thus, it is harder to maintain desired pace at the start (first 100+ meters) of the next repeat if my recovery is not a jog. Stiffness starts to set in any time I stop for 30-60 seconds or more.

This stiffness also occurs on longer group runs at slower paces(8-9 min miles), where we occasionally stop to let even slower people catch up.

I find that jogging during the recovery makes getting going again so much easier. It is almost as though I need to jog to do a mini warmup to transition easier into the next active repeat.

I know this likely does not apply to most younger people doing intervals. It did not apply to me until I hit 60 years old.

If the goal is to maintain desired paces and intensity, do whatever you need to during the recovery phase to achieve that goal.

Smoove wrote:

Let's be honest here: when talking about 1:00 recoveries during a 7 x 1 mile workout, the difference between active and passive rest is marginal and fairly theoretical in any event - whichever route you go.

Might be true. I've never done that standing around thing but I guess 1' is so short it might not be a huge difference. Oh, and I wanted to say to the poster who commented about those "wrong" paces. While Smooves training follows some kind of model, like mine does, like Canova's training does, J.S., basically everyone, it is hard to argue against Smoove. No training model really looks perfect bc training always has to suit YOU. And different people and life situations need different approaches. I saw Smoove ran a 1:11 half as ~45 year old (?) while working full time so Smoove definitely does most things pretty good.