How to take the edge off a difficult pace.
“Few things feel more motivating and empowering than running a pace that you expected to feel difficult, and it somehow felt easy. “
When training with a “goal” pace or velocity in mind, we often take the simplest possible approach. This means including the pace more frequently in training, or increasing the amount and/or density of the pace within single training sessions. This is good, but it can be limiting. To introduce an even higher level of manageability to a given pace, we need to make some manipulations.
Let’s say you’re training for a marathon. You’ve done a good amount of capacity-building work, and you’ve included frequent “steady” or “tempo” runs at your goal marathon pace. You’ve been increasing the duration of maintaining that pace, but it’s, frankly, still pretty difficult. And this difficulty calls into question your ability to extend the pace much farther during steady runs.
What do we do??
It’s time to reframe your body’s relationship to that particular pace.
What I mean is that we’re going to shift the role of the pace from that of a “race pace we’re chasing after” to that of “recovery pace”.
I know that sounds weird, but I’ll explain.
Few things feel more motivating and empowering than running a pace that you expected to feel difficult, and it somehow felt easy.
Now, easy is a relative term, but the training progression I’m about to explain seeks to achieve that very experience--no miracles though! Once achieved, you’ll be better equipped to extend the distance of that steady run, and maybe even have fun doing it.
You’re going to do workouts with blended paces, where you include both the goal pace we’ve talked about, as well as some work that’s faster than the goal pace. The workout will be situated such that the goal pace is inserted to immediately follow some faster and more intense interval(s), with no rest break in between. The idea here is that the goal-pace interval--though itself not exactly easy--is relatively easier than the immediately-preceding faster interval. What follows is a 6-session progression of what this might look like for a marathoner.
4 x (1 mi @ HM/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 90s rest
4 x (1200m @ 10k/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 2:30 rest
4 x (600m @ 5k/ 60s rest/ 600m @ 5k/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 3 min rest
4 x (3 x 400m @ 3k w/ 60s rest/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 4 min rest
4 x (2 x 400m @ 1500m w/ 60s rest/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 4 min rest
4 x (3 x 200m @ 800m w/ 90s rest/ 1 mi @ M) w/ 4 min rest
What is this doing, and why does it work?
This is a useful methodology for a few reasons. In laymen’s terms, it “teaches” the body that the steady pace is the only respite it’s going to get from the higher-intensity preceding intervals. Over time, adaptations occur that allow the body to return closer to a homeostatic and rested state during the steady section, as the body anticipates being thrust back into a higher-intensity bout to follow.
This is partially due to lactate dynamics. Legendary Italian coach Renato Canova found that, when training the lactate threshold of his athletes, it was more effective to “bounce” between paces that were slightly faster than LT pace, and slightly slower than LT, as opposed to the more traditional approach of a steady, uniform-pace run at LT pace. The more robust “injections” of lactate into the bloodstream during the faster sections would be “flushed out” during the slower sections, and the result was a more acute adaptation in the body’s lactate utilization and/or lactate tolerance.
Undergoing such a progression is training this “flushing” to take place during the steady sections. As the sessions progress, the faster sections introduce an increasing level of lactate into the system, but the pace and duration of the steady interval remains the same, and the body becomes increasingly competent at managing higher levels of lactate at this steady pace.
There’s also an important neuromuscular and psychological component to this. As the faster intervals get faster, their relative speed difference to the steady sections becomes more stark. Thus, the steady pace “feels slow” in terms of turnover and cadence, and the inertial swing feels more and more like “relief” in relation to the recently-ceased faster pace.
Some clarifications and caveats.
As is the case with training generally, this progression is not some canonical, set-in-stone workout prescription. While it could work very well for someone, it’s primary goal is to illustrate a principle, rather than provide a magical recipe. Your training should be fairly diverse, and so this is something that you would be best to integrate into a program, so as to not neglect other important aspects of training.
It’s worth noting that you don’t have to include 6 sessions in order to achieve the desired effect. Depending on the situation, you could maybe get away with 3 or 4 such sessions, or you may find that an even more gradual progression better suits your needs.
It’s also worth mentioning that, though I used marathon training as the example here, this technique could (and should) be used in preparation for other distances. As the spirit of this progression lies in the relationship between a fast pace and an even faster pace, it could be effectively employed to improve performance at virtually any distance, provided that the proper pace/duration/density modulations are made.
Give it a try. If you have any questions, hit me up here.
Stay awesome.
AED
Dreditor-in-chief
