Cheating Myself By Taking Longer Recovery During Intervals?

you're soft bro

10 seconds difference is neither here nor there.

This fine to take slightly longer rest near the end of your session

awesome blossom wrote:

How badly am I cheating myself if I take slightly longer recoveries during interval workouts. For example, if I'm running 1000 meter repeats and during later reps, I take ten seconds of extra recovery to allow myself to keep the same pace as my earlier reps. Does that defeat the purpose of the workout? Am I better off doing all my reps at a slower pace so I don't have to go over in my recovery?

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

awesome blossom wrote:

How badly am I cheating myself if I take slightly longer recoveries during interval workouts. For example, if I'm running 1000 meter repeats and during later reps, I take ten seconds of extra recovery to allow myself to keep the same pace as my earlier reps. Does that defeat the purpose of the workout? Am I better off doing all my reps at a slower pace so I don't have to go over in my recovery?

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

This- yes, 10 extra seconds might not make a difference but it might also be telling you that your target times are a little too fast.

Use your heart rate as a guide.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

awesome blossom wrote:

How badly am I cheating myself if I take slightly longer recoveries during interval workouts. For example, if I'm running 1000 meter repeats and during later reps, I take ten seconds of extra recovery to allow myself to keep the same pace as my earlier reps. Does that defeat the purpose of the workout? Am I better off doing all my reps at a slower pace so I don't have to go over in my recovery?

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

+100000000

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

awesome blossom wrote:

How badly am I cheating myself if I take slightly longer recoveries during interval workouts. For example, if I'm running 1000 meter repeats and during later reps, I take ten seconds of extra recovery to allow myself to keep the same pace as my earlier reps. Does that defeat the purpose of the workout? Am I better off doing all my reps at a slower pace so I don't have to go over in my recovery?

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

I’ve seen this advice before but I have read that jogging helps clear waste products from the muscles and that the blood can clot and things like that. Is walking fine to do instead?

Do any elites actually do this? They all seem to jogg 2-400m.

Gravy_the_real_one1 wrote:

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

+100000000

JS responding to his own post as usual.

awesome blossom wrote:

How badly am I cheating myself if I take slightly longer recoveries during interval workouts. For example, if I'm running 1000 meter repeats and during later reps, I take ten seconds of extra recovery to allow myself to keep the same pace as my earlier reps. Does that defeat the purpose of the workout? Am I better off doing all my reps at a slower pace so I don't have to go over in my recovery?

Honestly stop over thinking it so much and just run. People focus way too much on exact splits or recovery time during workouts. As long as you have a decent coach putting in the work and believing what you're doing will be effective is more essential than any of this recovery time or heart rate between intervals stuff. If you're Galen trying to gain small advantages over the best marathoners in the world maybe, but until then just do the work and don't stress.

I'm not Coach JS. Brojos, check my ip! If I'm Coach JS than ban me for life!!

Personally, I've found that recover jogs, distance determined by the distance of the interval, are by far the most effective method for my body. It seems to help me get a lot more out of workouts. Keeps me running, adds a little distance to the workout, helps my heart rate recover, and allows for seamless transition to the next interval. The recover pace is based exclusively on how my body feels.

Take the recovery time you need to safely AVOID pressing yourself into INJURY or overtraining when maintaining the same speed throughout an interval set.

Only elites seeking medals and therefore willing to gamble possible injurie should ever go into a workout with any other mindset than that.

This is great advice you are getting. To stay as an elite runner and I qualify this by saying a mile was the furthest I could go at a high level, I would add minutes rest if I needed it to maintain the best average time for the intervals. I was always aiming at the average time for the intervals. For example if I wanted to average 59 seconds for a 400 and was on pace for that, but it meant that I was going to self destruct in the immediate future couple, I would add 3 minutes to the recovery and continue the intervals to get the most done at that average. Sometimes after that I might even add another 3 minutes so I was keeping the interval times at the range I wanted. For me, and I speak only for me, I benefited the most from the last few intervals at that pace because my body had to respond to the demands I was making on it. It then used that adaptation in my races when I was getting fatigued. Good luck

ps. everyone is different so a certain rest for one athlete might be too short for some or too long for others. I always wrote down each interval; how I felt and kept track of average reps; I could tell I was coming up for a good race when my average rep was near my all time best.

Short(er) rest unless you are in the sharpening phase.

David Moorcroft would take 7 minutes rest between his kilometer reps. I think it depends on your genetics if you benefit more from short vs long rest.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

That makes sense to me intuitively but there must be a reason why some workouts call for an active (jog) recovery, some don't specify, some call for faster speeds with equal recovery time, some call for only a minute rest, etc.

Assuming you can recover in time for your remaining workouts of the week, does it make the most sense to run as close to max as possible and give ourself as much time so you need to recover?

Clarify something wrote:

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

I’ve seen this advice before but I have read that jogging helps clear waste products from the muscles and that the blood can clot and things like that. Is walking fine to do instead?

Do any elites actually do this? They all seem to jogg 2-400m.

The scientists doesn`t know exactly the whole energy process , but they nowadays know that lactate is used and needed in the muscle energy process and not just a waste product.......this need for lactate in the process also has a need for keeping up the level in an interval workout and then not start every rep from a very low level . Scientific tests has shown walking or jogging between the reps to be of equal importance and then walking is to be prefered because the runner needs to reach 120 bpm ( or 60 % of MHR) to get the very best rest time and effect, taking a jog between will of course lengthen the time down to reach 120 bpm . Hope this was a clear explanation... ))

Some or quite many coaches use to argue that you can`t stop in a race and therefore shouldn`t stop in an interval workout to teach the body to continue all the way as in a race, but this is what I use to say a "logical misunderstanding". A race is a race , and an interval workout is something else ... ) . A race and an interval workout have something in common, the race pace, but the race is at race pace all the way and the race pace in the intervals needs perfect recovery between the reps.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Best advice is: Stop guessing how much rest you need! Let your heart decide how much rest you really need after EVERY rep. Wait easy Walking until back to 120 bpm ( or roughly 60% of MHR). Test it out,you will be positive surprised! Good luck!

- The Magic Wizard - :)

JS is both right and wrong.

He is right that you should not be obsessed with an "exact" rest period for most workouts. Sufficient recovery to run at the intended efforts in GENERALLY what you want.

He is WRONG that you need to rely on your heart rate for "every" rep. If you actually know your body, which you want to, you should be able to do this by feel.

For example, recentlyI did 6x1000 at 5k pace, with 400 jog recovery. Between the first few, I jogged pretty much straight through, in 1:50 or so. By last two, I was walking a bit and jogging most of it, in 2:00-2:20. I did not look at the time OR the heartrate AT ALL during the rest, but I know by FEEL when I was READY for the next rep. Looking at my data afterward, I see that the recovery was to almost exactly 120bpm each time, with the rest getting longer through the workout.

Finally, he is also WRONG that you always want to ignore the duration of your recovery. For some mile/800/400 pace workouts, for example, you specifically WANT to accumulate and run through a certain amount of acidosis. You also want to be able to measure your improvement at doing the same workout. So sometimes the precise duration of rest DOES matter. (e.g. 10x400 at 1500 pace with 1:00 rest, 4x400 at 800 pace with 4:00 rest), 300,200 at 400 pace with 2:00 rest).

Real men run Imperial units.