When people do “sets”, usually their trying to push their body to more like lactate tolerance than other energy system. I remember reading something about Ovett’s training where he would do 400 and 200 with very short recovery in between and this being a set (could have been 300 and 200…). At such superb fitness level as Ovett was in, regular 400 repeats would not push his body to create enough lactic acid for tolerance training. The reason why we need a longer recovery between sets are simply because you need to. 200m is not that far but 30 seconds jog (I assumed it’s a jog) in between sounds pretty short. It is, after all, a pretty demanding workout. There’s nothing wrong with it, in my opinion, because it is an extreme way of developing your anaerobic capacity. Now you didn’t quite answer my question of WHY you’re doing them now.
Looking at your summary of peaking (that was 118 words, by the way…!), that is a pretty good summary, I’m impressed (except for the word counts); I really am. A couple of further questions, however, would be: you said you’d start out your anaerobic conditioners at marathon pace in, you didn’t mention, but I’d assume it’s about the beginning of the cycle so, say, if you’re working on a 3-season program (outdoor, cross country and indoor), December or January??? But since marathon is mostly run in aerobic metabolism, I’d assume you meant the “effort”. As I know it myself very well, when you’re not in shape, even marathon pace (here I’m talking about the pace I should have been able to run when I was at my prime, which is basically 20 pounds ago!) feels absolutely breathless. You said somewhere that your marathon PR is 2:40, wasn’t it? Then that would be 6-minute-mile pace, or 3 minutes for 800m and that would be way too slow for your interval sessions and also this will not cover faster paced running in the multi-paced program as the way I understand it is.
I like how you explained the increase of level of intensity from 3k pace in October to 800m pace in June. However, then how do you explain this to be multi-paced method when you are in fact not running at faster pace in the beginning of the cycle (800m pace in October), or did you not cover that part of it.
The truth is; the way you explained it, be it continuous running or in a repetition form, is exactly like the Lydiard program (or if it’s a race-week, non-race week program as Aussies would do, just like how Deek or other Aussies did; same weekly program but intensity increases; which is once again based on the Lydiard principles) and you didn’t cover actual multi-paced running part in your summary of “Peaking Multi-Paced Program Way”. Now I don’t know if you’re doing multi-paced program, which I don’t think you actually said you were, and let’s just say you just like doing some fast stuff whenever you feel like according to your peaking program, why are you doing the repeats at 800m pace in February? I think you should be doing somewhere around 2400m pace in February according to your peaking summary. Besides, your workout indicates very high level of lactate tolerance (I’m assuming here again) which would get you ready for the race very quickly. So my question when I asked you the purpose of this type of workout is why are you doing it now? Any indoor race coming up in two weeks? Or you don’t have any idea when you are going to peak? Again, this is an argument Lydiard had to fight over the last 50 years—interval trained athletes don’t know when they are going to peak.
If you like to compete year round, that’s perfectly fine and this type of workout of blending all kinds of speeds and paces through out the weekly schedule. Then that’s race-week, non-race week schedule. How you described the peaking for multi-paced training is exactly that.
One last question would be; you said 2-hour strong aerobic run is the peak volume and that the general level of volume peaks a few weeks from the biggest race; does that mean you’d recommend the largest volume of training with “almost” most intense workouts along with it a few weeks before the biggest competition? Sorry, I had to throw this one just to mess with ya. Now you hate me!