Analyze this workout (questioning my coach)

4 minutes sounds a little too generous. I would recommend 400 jog recovery after 1200 (about 2-3 minutes), 200 jog recovery after 1000 (about 1-2 minutes), and 400 jog recovery (about 2-3 minutes) after the 800 or set completion.

That's about what I was thinking - cause right around when we got to 3 min after the 1200, I felt ready to go, and just thought that extra minute was a lil too long. Hopefully I can get him to understand this within the next couple weeks, our next meet isn't until Pre-Nats. So we'll see.

Let me get this straight, you're asking for shorter rest AND faster intervals? I'd say you should think about that.

ramblin man wrote:

My OLD coach believed in shorter rest, and faster intervals (usually around 4:50 pace for a workout like this)

maybe you should have run faster then......

Take a look at wejo's article about training in college. Someone else will need to provide the link. His conclusion was that too many college runners overtrain and run strained because they are too competitive and think they need to hit fast splits in order to reach their goals. Wejo stressed focusing on running relaxed to get fast and not on burning every workout. Have a little faith in your coach.

And yeah, 4 min is a long rest for those intervals. But unless we see your entire training sched, it may be that this was an appropriate workout considering your whole sched.

Long rest gets a bad rap, but the difference between 3 and 4min is going to be minimal at those paces.

Look at some of Canova's stuff, he has his athletes taking 6min rest on some fairly slow (for them) repeats. It's all about modulating it though.

The goal of the workout isn't to do it as fast as you can with as little rest as you can. You're training for a purpose, not just to do the workout as hard as you can.

I might be in the minority here, but I don't think this is a bad workout. You got in 9k of work at under your 8k PR pace; that's a lot of fairly high intensity work, and, as such, the longer rest seems justified.

I do think, though, that if ALL of your race-pace-or-faster workouts take on this form, then there might be a problem; more VO2 max-oriented work (some of which is necessary to race your best at 8k-10k XC distances) has at most equal and often less than equal recovery time.

I've gotten some good responses so far, and I thank you guys. I agree that we did get a good amount of volume in at a pretty good clip - the goal of the workout was to be at 5min pace, and we were under that the whole time as evident by the times. I agree that there should have been a 400m jog after the 1200, and no longer than 2 min after the 1k and 800.

Thanks for the advice on checking out Wejo's article, and I have read a lot on Canova and his training too.

I understand the competitor side that comes out, which is natural, and I think I might feel a sense of urgency to run sub 25 cause it's my senior year and all (although I may come back and run a 5th year as well). We do have 2 more weeks of training until our next race, so I can understand the higher volume and whatnot. Thanks for the responses so far.

Not An Expert wrote:

I might be in the minority here, but I don't think this is a bad workout.

I'm in agreement. The rest seems just right to me. Of course, with so much junk in the minds of so many athletes today I'm no surprised at the OPs reaction.

You'll never run to your potential if you don't trust your coach. A lot of coaches will up the rest to make sure guys are recovering, especially since they inevitably hammer easy days as well.

Workout is pretty standard maxVO2, with slightly more than 1:1 rest. 9k is a fair volume for that kind of intensity, as well, and you don't necessarily want to be shot after a workout early in the season.

Trust your coach, and if you have questions, talk to your coach, not a message board.

malmo wrote:

Not An Expert wrote:

I might be in the minority here, but I don't think this is a bad workout.

I'm in agreement. The rest seems just right to me. Of course, with so much junk in the minds of so many athletes today I'm no surprised at the OPs reaction.

1) Sweet, I got a shoutout from malmo.

2) Apparently as I was composing two other people posted a pretty similar thing, so maybe I'm not in the minority by as much as I thought.

malmo wrote:

Not An Expert wrote:

I might be in the minority here, but I don't think this is a bad workout.

I'm in agreement. The rest seems just right to me. Of course, with so much junk in the minds of so many athletes today I'm no surprised at the OPs reaction.

Please. Arrogant db.

As several people above stated, just trust what you are doing because, frankly, it's what you will be doing; you may as well believe in it. And with the 25 flat versus 25:30, was it on the same course? If not, it may not be a fair comparison. Also, there is a good chance your coach reads letsrun. He may not be excited to read this thread.

I wish you the best...trust your training and run fast in T. Hautte

One of the dangers of taking too much rest is that it encourages you to do the intervals too fast. If you can slow down and avoid the too fast part, I don't see a problem with the workout.

The only thing that is confusing to me about the plan is that all the 3 interval distances all would be considered VO2 max type intervals. However, if you are running only 800 and doing it with a substantial rest, you will be just barely getting to max hr by the time the interval is over. This probably isn't the best way to devlop VO2 max.

Having said that, is your coach just now starting to introduce race pace work? If so, this could be a nice workout to transition from a more tempo run oriented base period into a more race pace / VO2 max strengthening period. I know a number of successful coaches who don't introduce any race pace stuff until 6 weeks out from the peak race (a strategy which I am employing this season).