15x200m with equal-ish rest - what were we training and why did i find it so hard?

Looks like a VO2 type workout? Guessing the 200s were roughly 30 secs or thereabouts? Look up the research of Veronique Bilatt - she found that with 30-30 intervals, you can accumulate more time at VO2 than traditional VO2 workouts, with good improvements. Traditionally, the workouts are done at mile - 3km speed with recovery at 50% of that. But you can obviously vary it to have static rest etc. Naturally with static rest, you’ll run the reps a bit quicker, likely pushing into that 800m-1k ish pace. The theory was that if you ran at VO2 max, then your oxygen consumption stays at close to 100% of VO2 max for a short period after the workout, hence the short recovery.

I’ve done plenty of these types of workouts over the years as part of a VO2 block, or just a maintenance session. I just moderate the pace so I’m not creeping too anaerobic.

I could be way off the mark, and your coach may have had completely different goals for the session though!

I have found that aerobic-type long distance runners who can run close to their threshold for a long time have a difficult time when they cross the threshold into anaerobic. They need more recovery time.

Anaerobic training. Only your coach knows what the purpose was, hard to say without knowing you as an athlete and the distances you run.

The rest is too long to be a workout around threshold or 10k efforts. 30/30 can be a solid VO2 max workout. 30/30-40s produces and accumulates lactate and if done too hard the levels can be very high, slowing down through the workout. A solid VO2 max workout does not need to be that hard. The downside is exactly as you say that you needed a lot of recovery and the workout could even be too hard setting you back.

Not sure what you train towards?

It's a lactate buffering session, no? Coe used to do 300's and even 400's with short recoveries @ 800m pace to provide this stimulus.

I'm sorry, but if you can do 15x200 at 800m pace, with 30 seconds rest, you don't know your best 800m pace.

That would be a ridiculously hard 800 pace workout.

I agree that this is a good VO2 max workout at 3000m pace.

OP said "very fast" which I take to mean very fast..like 800m pace fast. if so, taking 30 sec rest is not enough to get quality "fast reps" presumably working on strength and speed. This is another example of mixing two workouts. Im not saying you cant do it, but the effort and rest are off. If by very fast you meant 1600-3k pace, then yes 30 sec is fine (still short) and you are doing vo2 workout. The best vo2 workouts tend to be longer bouts like 3min + from my reading. But you wouldnt be the first to do 200 intervals/vo2. Personally, I feel like if you are going to do 200s or 150s, they might as well be reps, fast, and more recovery to run them right for the purpose of the workout ( I have a real hard time telling MS and HS runners that we are doing "200s" but they have to do them at threshold or VO2 pace, they just run too fast). So yea, we need to know what "very fast" means pace wise for you. Otherwise think this is at least a long purely anaerobic workout as you are not even jogging or walking what you ran. My guess: This was supposed to be a 1:1 Vo2 workout, but like most of us coaches, they didnt convey the effort/speed well enough and you ran too fast. So you are doing rep speed... with VO2 rest.

Why do coaches want to do interval/VO2 sessions on a 200? Isnt it much easier to manage (at HS level) and get the benefit by doing them as 800-1ks? Or 400s in a pinch if they belly ache about 8s?

Leg speed training, good time of year for it since indoor racing distances tend to be shorter for distance runners. If you are a mileage/tempo junkie it should hurt to increase your gate and keep the form needed to do speed training. Fun times

Thanks lydiard. You could mean absolutely anything depending on context

Thanks for all the info above. Insightful and a lot of food for thought.

In answer to some of the questions:

— I should've been more specific on pace. It was probably for me around mile-ish pace, maybe a tick slower.

— We're generally a marathon group, based in Berlin. The training is all geared around the Berlin Marathon in the fall with shorter races of 5k through to half marathon in the first half of the year.

I'm quite new to the group. We're doing a lot of shorter, sharper speed workouts at the moment, which suits me perfectly as I haven't been anywhere near enough of this in recent years. The coach is a bit of a maverick. We train twice a week, never know what we're going to be doing or where we'll be doing it. In the two months I've been with the group I've yet to set foot on a track. Last week we did 22 minutes running laps around a 25m long sand pit with intervals of uptempo laps, sprints and plyometrics. Lots and lots of drills before each session. He jokes that some of his training methods are inspired by those of the old DDR, though I'm not always sure he's joking. Great fun nonetheless.

Thanks again.

I had the same issue. For you, you're better off doing full rest in between each. The same training doesn't work for everyone. Run them easier if your coach forces you to only have that much rest.

Most workouts like this are more important for you technique or concentration.

Unfortunately most of you will focus on the physical response.

Training is mostly mental at the highest level. Yeah do the work, but how your mind drives your body at maximum effort is the key.

The answer to what type of workout you were doing totally depends on what pace it was at. Based on the equal rest, it sounds like this was probably a VO2 max workout if it was done around your 2 mile pace. If this was like 800 pace or faster it would be more of a lactate tolerance workout.

In that case, this sounds like it was an intensive tempo workout, although the recovery was bit on the short end, so it might have turned into a bit of lactate tolerance by the end.

Interesting. I do not have the science or even measurements to back it up, but 30/30 fartlek always felt like a sort of threshold workout to me. At least more so than 60/60. 3-5 reps in you can't really run at 800 or mile pace anymore and the recovery segments don't feel easy. The overall feeling becomes close that of a continuous threshold to 10k tempo.

This is how I explained it to myself. During 'on' segments you go hard and empty all the fast fuel systems. 30 second jog breaks are not enough to fully recover them and several reps in you start working mostly aerobically. Yet you do manage to recover some, enough maybe to accelerate for 3 seconds. And you won't lose as much of that initial acceleration in just 30 seconds. So you train threshold while at the same time giving your legs some muscle memory of running pretty fast at threshold effort.

Maybe my impressions don't really contradict that research though, it's just that my definitions are confused? I use 'threshold' and 'aerobic' interchangeably, but 10K and 5K paces are also 'aerobic', while intervals at those paces are commonly considered 'VO2max' training.

Acidosis tolerance due to the speed (mile pace). I wouldn’t do 15 reps of this kind of work unless super fit

Problem is we have no context.

This.

The #1 mistake novices make is that they assume the goal is speed, but if you go too fast in the first reps, you become anaerobic in the last reps. Then, you DNF the workout or you are wiped out the next day. You went out too fast... and/or jogged too fast in the recovery... and you inadvertently sabotaged the benefits of the workout. You became anaerobic.

The goal of the workout is volume. Studies show that runners who did the Billat 30-30 improved VO2 as much as runners who did a traditional tempo run. Not only does your HR stay high during the recovery, you get a lot of time at current mile race pace, which helps build efficiency. If you pay attention to your body, you'll discover tiny things you can do to relax after the first 6-7 reps (assuming you're not running too fast) that you can apply in a race.

I normally suggest novices begin with 6-8x 30/30, progress to 2 sets of 8x30/30 and then 2 sets of 12x30/30. The 5-7 minute between sets allows novices to reset to run slower in the second set.

The Billat 30-30 has been a staple workout for me for years as a 400/800m runner. I have 3 variations: Classic (mile pace with half that speed for recovery), Fast (slightly faster pace with walking recovery or slightly longer time or both), and Distance (less variation in pace, but over time increasing the distance covered in 12 reps).

There is a 0% chance anyone could do this workout at 800 pace. 200's with 30 seconds rest is one of my bread-and-butter workouts. For 15x, 3k pace should be doable. Mile pace would be very difficult to hold for the whole workout. 800 meter pace would be impossible.

If you haven't done a speed workout with short rest before, you basically run a rep, bend over to breath a few times, glance at your watch and see you only have 10 seconds left before the next rep.

In my mind, I have always considered these to be 3k workouts since the pace doesn't get much faster.