In the Strength and Intervals cycle of my training program I alternate each Monday between a tempo run and intervals. Last week I was recovering from my half marathon so I did not run a tempo run. Rather, the race counted as a tempo run because of how I ran that race. However, today I was back on track and that meant interval training.
Interval training on the treadmill
It’s best if you can run intervals on a measured track, such as a high school or college track. However, I do not have access to a track and even if I did, I would not have time to go there in the morning before work. Therefore, I program my interval workouts on my treadmill.
I find this to be really ideal since I can control all of the variables such as speed, distance and elevation. Since real tracks don’t have any elevation to them, I keep it at 0 on my treadmill. For each interval, I program in my goal running pace and distance. Since I’m training for a marathon I am focused mainly on 800 meter (roughly ½ mile) repeats with 400 meter recoveries in between.
Can I just tell you, I really hate 800 meter intervals. I don’t mind 400 meters but 800 meters is just miserable. I mentioned my disdain for this distance during my run coaching training and it turns out that no one likes this distance but I learned that there is a scientific reason for it.
Science behind the 800m misery
Right about the 800 meter distance your body switches over from one energy system to another. For about 300 meters you can rely on your aerobic respiration but after that your muscles demand more and your body switches over to anaerobic respiration. However, this builds lactic acid by-products in the muscles which over time reduces the efficiency of the muscles (ie. causes you to slow down from fatigue and pain). Either you push through the pain to the end of the 800 meters or you slow down.
My 800m workout
My training program called for 5 miles today. Whenever there is a specific distance named then that is the “working” time, so that means that I should plan to do 10 sets of 800m distance intervals to equal 5 total working miles. Well, it doesn’t take long to figure out that this is going to be a really long workout when you add in the 400m recoveries between intervals and the warm up and cool down miles on each end.
By the time I was done building this treadmill workout it was 9 miles long and an hour and 45 minutes. That’s a really long mid-week workout for me. I managed to get through 6.25 miles in an hour and 13 minutes. That ended up being 7 of the 10 planned intervals; 4 hard and 3 easy. Then, I cooled down on the treadmill by walking for about 5 minutes.
In total, I ran 3.5 miles of intervals during that 6.25 mile workout. Since I’m not a highly experienced runner I prefer to walk or lightly jog my recoveries, which means that the workouts take me longer to complete. I also alternate between hard and easy intervals. I’ll run 800m hard and get out of breath (and make my muscles scream in agony), then recover. In the next interval, I’ll run 800m at my conversational pace, then recover. There’s about a two and a half minute per mile difference between my conversational pace and long interval pace. As the number of intervals ticks up toward the end of the workout, I’m feeling the overall fatigue and even the easy intervals are challenging.
Thank goodness this workout only comes once every other week!
Workout
800m intervals – Managed 3.5 of 5 mile goal due to time