Aerobic Repeats
Most runners think that speed work is a key to gaining fitness and being race ready. While it’s true that you need to do some race pace work (and you should use that term rather than speed work) to race to your potential, you need to have done weeks and months of challenging aerobic workouts first.
Aerobic repeats are done entirely below your anaerobic threshold, which is different than workouts such as 10 x 400m with 60 seconds of walking, where you are maxing out the aerobic metabolism plus dipping into the anaerobic metabolism. The aerobic repeat workout is entirely aerobic and it’s the type of workout you want to be doing regularly in the foundational phase of your training.
4 x 8 minutes with 3 minutes steady is the first aerobic repeat workout I use with athletes. Totaling 41 minutes of high level aerobic running, this is a challenging workout, so long as you run steady rather than easy for the 3-minute segment. Yes, it’s slower than the 8-minute segment, but don’t think of it as a full recovery. By the end of the 3 minutes, you should be thinking, “I wish I had another minute at this pace.” Do a 10-minute warm-up and a 10-minute cool-down to get 61 minutes of total running.
What paces should you run? I have no idea. I have no idea what your fitness is, so I can’t tell you what paces you should be able to run for this workout. What I can tell you is if you run by feel, you’ll be able to execute this workout on the second or third try. The keys to this workout are as follows.
First, you need to make the first 8-minute segment very conservative. Do that and you give yourself a great chance of running faster on the next three 8-minute repetitions.
Second, you need to make your last 8-minute repetition your fastest repetition. If you do that, then you’ll have done a workout that has a slight progression to it, aka a negative split workout, where the second half of the workout is faster than the first half of the workout.
Third, you must be able to say, “I could have done one more 8-minute repetition. I wouldn’t have wanted 5 minutes of steady running rather than 3 minutes, yet I know I could have done it.” If you can say that at the end of the workout, then you’ve done a great job executing this workout.
Just like the fartlek workout, there is no shame in bombing this workout the first or second time you do the workout. All that means is that you’re learning the skill of running by feel, which is a challenge if you’ve been running all of your workouts based on pace.
Final thought. This is basically an extended version of the fartlek workout, and for that reason, this is the next workout you should do after you have a couple of fartlek workouts under your belt. The difference is that you have to focus for 8 minutes, which is much more difficult than focusing for 4 minutes.
Feel free to do 5 x 8 minutes with 3 minutes steady for 52 minutes of challenging aerobic running (so 72 minutes with a 10-minute warm-up and 10-minute cool-down). That’s the longest aerobic repeat workout most high school athletes and adult athletes need to do. From there, it makes sense to move into progression runs and progression fartleks.
Progression Runs
Progression runs are not only a great way to get a significant aerobic stimulus, they are also an indicator of your ability to run by feel. Let me explain.
Because a progression run has you running progressively faster throughout the run, you have to gauge your effort early in the workout. While you don’t want to run so slow to start this workout that you’re not being challenged, there is a tendency to run a bit too fast on the first segment of the progression run. You’ll have to speed up at three points in this run, so you have to make sure that in the first section, you are being challenged, but running conservatively. If you are skilled at running by feel, this won’t be a problem, but if you’re still honing that skill, then knowing what rhythm you can run and still be able to speed up three times will pose a challenge.
I really like a 50-minute progression run as the bread and butter version of this run, but only for the fit, mature athlete. The assignment is 20 minutes steady, 15 minutes a bit faster, 10 minutes a bit faster, then 5 minutes fast but controlled. If you do a 10-minute warm-up and a 10-minute cool-down, you have 70 minutes of running. For many high school athletes, this workout can serve as the long run. And the pace changes help most athletes stay focused on the task at hand, so long as the first part of the run is truly steady.
Key Point: The high school athletes I work with do these workouts a bit differently, incorporating strides as part of the warm-up and as part of the last 10-15 minutes of the run. If you’re interested in learning how that is done, you can enroll in the Fundamentals Education Course.
If you do LMLS before the run and SAM after the run, then you’ll work out for 90 minutes, start to finish. This is a realistic amount of time to ask high school or collegiate athlete to train, as well as being a realistic amount of time for the busy adult with a hectic life.
You can start with a 40-minute progression run: 15 minutes steady, 10 minutes faster, 10 minutes faster, then 5 minutes fast but controlled. You can also extend this workout and do a 60-minute progression, where you do 30 minutes steady, 15 minutes faster, 10 minutes faster and 5 minutes fast but controlled. That’s a long day, with 80 minutes of running between the progression run and 10 minutes for the warm-up and cool-down. Add 20-25 minutes of LSLM and SAM and now you’re close to 105 minutes for the day.
For high school athletes, this workout is more appropriate for juniors and seniors who have a training age of a couple of years. Following the mantra of “easy days easy so the hard days can be hard” then this is a great aerobic workout for high school athletes, and because it’s a hard workout, this is a day to do some challenging post run general strength. The neuromuscular work done after this workout will depend on the philosophy of the coach and how much they believe in the importance of neuromuscular work.
Hint: a good coach should have some sort of faster running as part of every workout. Successful high school coaches like John O’Malley, Jeff Boele and Dr. Jeff Messer all have their athletes running fast each day. Simply listen to my interviews with them on the Coaching Runners podcast to learn how they infuse fast running into a training session.
Key Point: At the end of this workout, you must be able to say, “I could have run another 5 minutes at the final pace and felt decent doing so. And I could have run another 10 minutes at the final pace if it were a race effort.” Said another way, you’re never going to end this workout running all out. If you do that, then you’re not executing this workout correctly.
As long as you start the progression run conservatively, you should be able to speed up three times. The workout is a lot of fun when you execute it properly and it’s great mental practice for race day, when you’ll want to be pushing in the late stages of the race.
This workout should come after you’ve done a couple of Fartlek workouts and after you’ve done at least one Aerobic Repeats workout.
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