Long or short rest for middle distance runners? HADD wrong?

JuanLes wrote:

But then you have guys like Nick Symmonds who uses long rest. Example: 7x1k with 2 min recovery.

That's considered long rest? Seems about average rest for kilometer reps.

Sand Dunes wrote:

JuanLes wrote:

But then you have guys like Nick Symmonds who uses long rest. Example: 7x1k with 2 min recovery.

That's considered long rest? Seems about average rest for kilometer reps.

Its about the longest for km reps people use if you want to do them aerobically/at treshold.

But whats the advantage of so long rest?

You'll be able to run them faster, thats all I can think of. But wouldn't it be better, like HADD suggest, with shorter rest so that your HR stays higher troughout the workout and you minimize the use of the anaerobic system? With 2 min rest your HR will go down to or sub 100 (for the average man).

JuanLes wrote:

Sand Dunes wrote:

That's considered long rest? Seems about average rest for kilometer reps.

Its about the longest for km reps people use if you want to do them aerobically/at treshold.

But whats the advantage of so long rest?

You'll be able to run them faster, thats all I can think of. But wouldn't it be better, like HADD suggest, with shorter rest so that your HR stays higher troughout the workout and you minimize the use of the anaerobic system? With 2 min rest your HR will go down to or sub 100 (for the average man).

I agree with the other poster. 2min isn't long or short. Also, was symmonds using them as a tempo interval workout or might he have been going faster? My guess is that they were a little faster. Symmonds regularly did 5 mile tempos at low to mid 5min pace and he did a lot of work at what some might call his 'CV pace (between 8k and 12k pace) with short to medium rest like the one you mentioned.

Watched 1:45 800m runner Aussie Luke Matthews do 8x1k on 4 min cycle. Stephen Seiler says 2 minutes of rest is all you need for most efforts to improve aerobic performance. Longer rest for pure speed but that is the art right?

My philosophy on this topic personally..... it depends.

For someone around 4:05 8:10 14:00's

Early Season

Speed (mile-5k)- take plenty of rest 90seconds to 2minutes for 200-400's (30-34 per 200 pace) (hills)

Strength(10k-HMP)- 60-90 seconds between CV and Threshold reps... maybe 70-76 per 400 pace depending on workout

Mid-Late Season

Speed (mile-5k)- more sets for reps to get closer to a race feel ex... 3x4x400 w/60-75 sec rest 4 min after sets

Strength(10k-HMP)- 60-90 seconds between CV and Threshold reps... maybe 70-76 per 400 pace depending on workout

Strength doesn't change... just more volume or gets faster with YOUR CURRENT FITNESS....

Symmonds did them at aprox treshold, meaning lactate around 3.5 mmol.

I still doesn't see a reason for such long rest, where I'm from thats quite unusual. Why do the workout with more of the anaerobic system involved and with less time at higher HR? Is the speed you gain from 2min/90sec rest versus 45sec/60sec really that important? Say you're going for treshold, you'll only run perhaps 5-8 sec faster on average. Its still far far from race pace anyway, so wouldn't think that would matter.

I should add that I don't know if I'm actually running at threshold lactate...I can't afford a lactate meter. But I'm guessing

Standing rests could likely lead to it being more and more anaerobic considering your heart rate drops and you have to use more anaerobic systems to get back to your VO2max. So you have MORE of a build up of lactic acid. Both types of training should be used depending on the stress you are looking for.

if you train the athlete not the event then this whole discussion becomes moot.

if you train the athlete not the event then you don't have 800m runners or 1500m runners, there's just you. the athlete.

if you can currently run 4 x 1000m at your 10,000m race pace with a 2:00 recovery, and you are properly recovering from that, and you are sleeping well and your weight is stable, then you can look at progressing the session. and, depending on what you are training for, and where you are in your training cycle you might:

a. add 1 rep and run 5 x 1000m at the same pace with the same recovery

b. shorten the recovery

c. run them faster

when training "progression" is addressed in this way it doesn't much matter whether 2:00 is long or short or common or regular or rare or whatever. it just is. it is where you are now, and you will shortly be somewhere else, and when you are there, 2:00 will have been a stop you made along the long road to athletic success and no one will care whether you gave it a name or not.

when training "progression" is addressed in this way it doesn't much matter what Hadd said or what Cerutty said or what Lydiard said, and you don't have to spend endless hours debating material none of you understand and arguing about what some bloke said forty years ago in a book neither of you have read.

train the athlete, not the event.

cheers.

Stopcecil! wrote:

Standing rests could likely lead to it being more and more anaerobic considering your heart rate drops and you have to use more anaerobic systems to get back to your VO2max. So you have MORE of a build up of lactic acid. Both types of training should be used depending on the stress you are looking for.

I disagree. The standing/longer rest keeps the lactic down, compared to shorter rest, but the duration at higher heart rate is lower. Thats exactly the question. The stress. The stress I'm looking for is just the best possible stress to improve aerobically.

Thats easy to say, harder to accomplish (training the athlete, not the event).

I disagree a bit though, I think it does matter as 1:00 versus 2:00 is quite different in terms of the speed you are able to run at. I'm not doing the paralysis analysis bit either, as you are suggesting. I'm merely interested in discussing the difference between short and long rest. They aren't the same, so that means they'll in some way achieve better, worse or different things.

bump

Also, you want your training to be done in a progressive manner. And the propose of certain reps change depending on where you are in your phase of training phase. So for example as a 800m runner, you might do 1000m reps w/ 200m rest in the fall during your base phase as cruise intervals. But when peaking for a 800m race during the track season you might do 3 x 1000m @ mile pace with 4+ minute rest. All about progression.

The FT/ST dichotomy is a bit of a simplification, and when you get down around 800m, everyone has a fair number of FT fibers. Symmonds ran 3:34, which implies that he might be more 'resistant' as opposed to 'fast' for his event. In other words, focusing on thresholds and longer LT intervals (which can be closer to his specific pace than a tempo run) might make sense for him.

By contrast, when Hadd/Antonio/etc talk about someone like Alberto Juantorena, I think the emphasis for threshold work would be on short fast reps with an active interval of ~2/3 the duration of the rep.

Stopcecil! wrote:

Standing rests could likely lead to it being more and more anaerobic considering your heart rate drops and you have to use more anaerobic systems to get back to your VO2max. So you have MORE of a build up of lactic acid. Both types of training should be used depending on the stress you are looking for.

This^

If an athlete does VO2 max type reps at, say 3k-5k pace, the workout is more aerobically challenging if an athlete takes short rest because the athlete's heart rate never really has a chance to return to resting. The athlete may also accrue higher total blood lactate concentrations because 90 seconds just isn't enough for all of the lactate to be processed out during the rest period.

However

If an athlete does the same workout, kilos at 3k-5k pace, with longer (rests 3-5 minutes), the heart rate will drop much further during the recovery. More blood lactate will be processed and the peak blood lactate levels achieved during the workout will be lower. This does not mean the workout is any less effective, especially for 800m runners.

When HR drops back toward resting, this means the the beginning of the next rep will require more anaerobic energy input as heart rate ramps back up toward maximum. This means that the athlete will be more effectively training the glycolytic pathways, while at the same time getting a solid aerobic session. for 800 types that are mostly FT, speed power type runners, this type of aerobic power training is gold, because it more closely mimics the metabolic requirement of the target event

I understood this concept intellectually for many years, but only figured out how to put it into practice a couple of years ago. I had a kid who only ran 1:56 for me, but 2 years later went on to run 1:50.3 as a college sophomore. For most of the kid's career, he was stuck at around 1:58-2:00. It was only toward the end of his senior year, when I actually started letting him take more rest on the long intervals, that he dropped to 1:56. His college coach was not afraid to let him rest between reps and he went 1:51 high as a freshman before dropping to 1:50.3 as a soph.