Stupidest Workout Ever? - 4x 1600m w/2:30 recovery - 4:52, 4:55, 4:55, 4:57

If any of you have been following Hitomi Niiya's workouts for her 1:06 national record half marathon for Japan, here were her mile sessions. Remember this is the highest level female athlete in a distance nation for 10,000m and Half Marathon with several years of mileage and workouts in her legs, not a high school teenager.

One note on rest, for any of you trained the Dellinger way as I was in college, a 4 x 1600m workout could either have a 400m jog recovery or an 800m jog recovery depending on the timing of the session. That could be up to 2 min or 5 min rests depending on the day which I would hit between 4:23-4:26/mile -

4 Oct- 6 x 1600m in 5:02, 5:00, 5:02, 4:58, 4:58, 4:56 (rec. 90")

2 Nov- 6 x 1600m in 4:59, 4:56, 5:00, 4:56, 4:59, 4:54 (rec. 90")

https://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/t-minus-about-hundred-days-to-national.html

Nonsense! wrote:

Why on earth would anyone do mile repeats with each one getting slower? This is exactly how you train your body to die in a race. Talented girl with fast times, but the coaching is pure sh*t!

What if the goal was just to run sub-5 each time? Does running the first repeat a bit too fast make the later ones less valuable?

Translated. "I feel immaculate that the lady can do a workout I can't."

I agree that the rest doesn't really make much sense. If she were doing cruise intervals, it'd be about 1 min, if she were doing VO2max intervals, it'd be around 4-5min of rest. So if she was targeting 4:55min/mile, she essentially lost half her workout because she went too fast on the first, and didn't allow for full recovery, then bombed the last two. But if she had been targeting 5:00, then that would be a different story. However, she's still in highschool, so not everything needs to be tweaked to perfection. The most important thing is to still work relatively hard and run a lot in high school without burning out.

He's definitely overreacting. But he's kinda got a point. It'd be better if he expressed it as concern for the girl instead of rage to prove everyone is stupid except him

LLEW wrote:

If any of you have been following Hitomi Niiya's workouts for her 1:06 national record half marathon for Japan, here were her mile sessions. Remember this is the highest level female athlete in a distance nation for 10,000m and Half Marathon with several years of mileage and workouts in her legs, not a high school teenager.

One note on rest, for any of you trained the Dellinger way as I was in college, a 4 x 1600m workout could either have a 400m jog recovery or an 800m jog recovery depending on the timing of the session. That could be up to 2 min or 5 min rests depending on the day which I would hit between 4:23-4:26/mile -

4 Oct- 6 x 1600m in 5:02, 5:00, 5:02, 4:58, 4:58, 4:56 (rec. 90")

2 Nov- 6 x 1600m in 4:59, 4:56, 5:00, 4:56, 4:59, 4:54 (rec. 90")

And you don't think that is a tougher workout? You are running 50% more (4 versus 6) with significantly less recovery (i.e. 90s). Probably also running another 30+ mpw. given she is like 8+ weeks out from the race

Nonsense! wrote:

Exactly. The workout serves no useful purpose other than to show off for Milesplit and say look what I can do. I still would like to know what she is training for and why she is busting mile intervals in May with no HS championships looming.

Sounds like fun. Do you know what "fun" is?

I agree. 99.9% of running is for fun. We act like high school racing is more important than it really is. So yes, she probably felt great for several days after this workout. We run and race to test our limits. That is what she did. I am still pretty fast but I do not race. However. I run one hard workout or time trial every week. Nobody is there to watch or cheer but it does not really matter.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Translated. "I feel immaculate that the lady can do a workout I can't."

Huh? It would have been a better workout doing all 4 at 4:57 on 5 minutes rest?

Op goes home devastated. 5 seconds gap between repeats? Sounds petty evenly split. The wind was blowing differently one rep, one rep for 5 seconds the runner got distracted and slowed slightly, all were even effort split, etc. This is a successful workout.

A 20 second gap is a different story. Or even an even split could be a failed workout if at the end you’re completely dead and all good form is out the window.

I think we have a bunch of people upset that there is a new stud who is faster than their current favorite runners.

keyboard workout wrote:

Op goes home devastated. 5 seconds gap between repeats? Sounds petty evenly split. The wind was blowing differently one rep, one rep for 5 seconds the runner got distracted and slowed slightly, all were even effort split, etc. This is a successful workout.

A 20 second gap is a different story. Or even an even split could be a failed workout if at the end you’re completely dead and all good form is out the window.

The OP falls in the people-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands category.... bombing a session is something else entirely

And people.... different rests reflect the specific workout purposes....

The order of the splits (fastest rep first or slowest rep first) makes absolutely 0 difference to the aim of the session. There is nothing physiologically

I'm not going to try and get technical with terms like VO2 max and aerobic threshold and other terms that are thrown around loosely by people who don't really understand and muddy the waters.

The session was a 5k paced session, with enough recovery for the athlete to complete 4 miles at 3.1 mile pace. It improves her 5k ability.

People really overthink training.

Nonsense! wrote:

Shorter,Than Frank wrote:

Relax, turbo! That's a 5-second differential ... you won't find many achieving that in a race. I think it's pretty damn impressive.

Impressive and helpful are 2 different things. Going out and running mile repeats as fast as you can is just plain stupid. You can try to convince yourself that it isn't but it is. She gets nothing out of a workout like this. She may not have any competition in her state, but nationally in 2021 if there is a season, she will get smoked if this is the kind of workout she is doing. I assume that since Milesplit was there, this is one they wanted to showcase.

Turbo lol, exactly. What a D bag you are. Anonymous loser, I'd like to see you talk like this on camera. You're trash kid.

It’s five seconds from best to worst. If the goal is 4:55, she nailed the workout with a first rep where she got out of the gate a little quick on the first rep, possibly even the first quarter mile, and had a small 2 second lapse in attention on the last one. How is this a bad workout?

ex-runner wrote:

The order of the splits (fastest rep first or slowest rep first) makes absolutely 0 difference to the aim of the session. There is nothing physiologically

I'm not going to try and get technical with terms like VO2 max and aerobic threshold and other terms that are thrown around loosely by people who don't really understand and muddy the waters.

The session was a 5k paced session, with enough recovery for the athlete to complete 4 miles at 3.1 mile pace. It improves her 5k ability.

People really overthink training.

Exactly. The "training your body to run slowly" thing isn't really true, especially not when you slow like 1.5% as she did here. There's some injury risk if you start really gutting it out, but that didn't happen here either.

Op is just going to btfo but that’s how you run a hard workout. You don’t pvssyfoot around and try to run even splits all cute and neat. You go out hard, especially when you’re solo. Crying over a 5 second differential is stupid.

The fact that this is even a thread is additional proof Letsrun has caved completely into the abyss. A workout with an average time of 4:55 with a standard deviation of less than 2 seconds is excellent consistency. There is nothing more to debate .