How to execute this run better next time? (Read 245 times)

No, sorry, I beg to differ.  Never EVER do "one more" in interval training.  She did it right to have stopped after the third one.  "Trying the last one just to see if you could get back to the prescribed pace" is like a waiter telling you the plate is very hot and you still have to touch it and burn yourself to make sure it's hot.  One less in interval training is always better than one more.

Just my experience that the last but one interval is the hardest, the last one makes me feel like I slacked off the previous ones and is generally the fastest. So if doing 4 X 4 and the third one came in a bit slower than the first two, I would have tried that last one just to see if could get back to my prescribed pace, but then again you may want to stop at a place where you feel like you could do one more interval and not race the last 600 m.

I agree with Happyfeet

  the next to last interval is always a bigger psychological challenge. 

True, dat, brother.  And glad to hear it's not just me.

Happyfeet, thanks for saving me the trouble of searching. I will check out that thread. Yes, I'm definitely reading the plan right.

Jeff, I think you hit the nail on the head. I was trying to think about too much.

Boiler, the plan gave suggested paces for distances but if doing the intervals by duration, no pace was given. That being said, I chose the 4 minute intervals and the corresponding distance where the fasted recommended time for completting that distance was 4:01 was 600 meters. That tells me I ran too fast(as if I didn't figure that out already) because I covered more distance than that in the 4 mins. Basically, I learned I need to slow down. Also, I was trying for it to feel harder than I was supposed to,I misunderstood that part before heading out. I know that now.

I'll reply to the rest of your replies tomorrow. I appreciate you all taking time to give advice.

   Even with doing a simple sprint, we make students run back and forth, with very short breaks between. Most students are racing, (which we want), and by the fourth or fifth lap, everyone is really slowing. by 8-10, most students are still giving 100% effort but moving at little more than a jog.

 

I am not sure what the aim is of this interval training so that I will explain two of the concepts (I leave lactate intervals out as these imply longer distances).

We use basically two types of intervals: intervals proper and so called "strides". The latter are for form training and maybe not too interesting for you (nice to do anyway).

I am just going to point that despite the general idea the key in interval training is not the hard intervals themselves but the REST: It is during these rests when the body proceeds to adapt itself to the stress it suffered. Very basically: It's during this period when the muscle start to build up and for this to happen they need time else you will be only breaking them and burning fuel.

I'm not going to bring up the boring details but there is a very simple basic technique that you can use. It requires a HRM.
The idea is to make a hard interval at a given pace, distance or whatever and then wait until the HR slows back to 120. When it reaches this value the student is ready for the next interval.

The figure of 120BPM is because: It's about 20 beats below the average recovery HR (70% or 140BPM using a HRmax of 185), so you are reasonably sure that even somebody with a higher or lower HRmax will be at her recovery rate while keeping it high enough to get back to a high HR during the intervals proper.

There is more, of course like the pace and distance of the intervals, but these depend on your goals so that I am not going to discuss them here as it seems that your aim is not to train your students to run a 26 miler...

I am not sure what the aim is of this interval training so that I will explain two of the concepts (I leave lactate intervals out as these imply longer distances).

We use basically two types of intervals: intervals proper and so called "strides". The latter are for form training and maybe not too interesting for you (nice to do anyway).

I am just going to point that despite the general idea the key in interval training is not the hard intervals themselves but the REST: It is during these rests when the body proceeds to adapt itself to the stress it suffered. Very basically: It's during this period when the muscle start to build up and for this to happen they need time else you will be only breaking them and burning fuel.

I'm not going to bring up the boring details but there is a very simple basic technique that you can use. It requires a HRM.
The idea is to make a hard interval at a given pace, distance or whatever and then wait until the HR slows back to 120. When it reaches this value the student is ready for the next interval.

The figure of 120BPM is because: It's about 20 beats below the average recovery HR (70% or 140BPM using a HRmax of 185), so you are reasonably sure that even somebody with a higher or lower HRmax will be at her recovery rate while keeping it high enough to get back to a high HR during the intervals proper.

There is more, of course like the pace and distance of the intervals, but these depend on your goals so that I am not going to discuss them here as it seems that your aim is not to train your students to run a 26 miler...

Now I guess different people do "interval training" for different purpose...  As far as WE are concerned, with Running Wizard or Lydiard training, "interval" training is to develop body's ability to withstand oxygen debt.  Arthur himself actually called them "repetitions" but his terms were actually wrong...or confusing to internationally accepted meaning of the terms.

At any rate, of course it develops not just that and it includes other development--such as "speed"--so, as far as WE are concerned, we have basically two different types of "interval" training; one is to work on your breathing, the other to work on leg-speed.  Either way, however, the AIM should be to develop body's ability to withstand oxygen debt.  In other words, you'll have to run for a certain duration in order to get to the point where you actually create oxygen debt.  You can sprint all out for 50m and, while you'll be huffing and puffing and your legs get tired, you are not quite creating lots of oxygen debt.  You want at least 200m, or longer than 30+ seconds of sustained effort to get there.  Of course, a tricky part here is; if it gets too long, then the effort almost becomes aerobic, or high aerobic, and you won't achieve that objective either.  Probably the best suited distance would be 200m up to 1km.  You do them shorter distances and you'll be working on leg-speed as well.  You do them longer distance and you'll stress a lot more on your "breathing".  "Strides", as WE see it, is not intervals.  We DO have a workout called "strides" and the aim is completely different.  As you said, it IS a form exercise and, if you get into heavy oxygen debt, you'll start to struggle and the form would go out the window.  These two workouts should NOT be mixed up together.  Same with "sprint" workout.

I know, lately, even AKTrail, had raised a question on having to reach up to 9 RPE while running at "only" 1/4 effort.  We use 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 effort, as did Lydiard, and try to incorporate it but I can see that even created more confusion.  1/4 effort for, say, 2-hour run is very much different from 1/4 effort for, say, 400m for interval training.  When you are supposed to do 15 X 400m, you won't start out the first 400m all out, would you?  So you do at 1/4 effort.  You do over volume of them and it WILL get to RPE 9!

Now, above post in regards to REST for interval is a bit off.  The concept that REST is important with interval training actually came from the concept of Gershler and Reindell back in 1940s and 1950s when they "created" interval training, a couple of decades after interval training started to be practiced (by Finns mostly).  They figured that, as you stop running fast and they even had runners stop completely and lie down sometimes; and as the runner starts back up and run, the heart work extra hard to get back up to the level of HR and it's this "over-work" of the heart that develops the power and strength of the heart; hence, rest is important; hence naming this workout as "interval".  The concept of adaptation, which you just explained, is correct that all the adaptation and development occur during the REST but that's not the REST between fast segments of interval training.  I don't think the adaptation happens in a span of a couple of minutes.  In fact, the study shows that the peak of adaptation (recovery) from intense anaerobic effort is 48 HOURS.

Nobby,

A couple of questions...

1. the 1st bold and underlined section below... did you mean "anaerobic" instead of "aerobic"?

2. for the 2nd bold and underlined section below.  How could one actually even try to measure "1/4 effort" and differentiate it from "1/2" or "1/3" effort?  It seems very subjective and arbitrary without any unit of measurement.

 

1. The longer the work portion, the more aerobic it will be. You can't maintain anaerobic intensity for long. (I recognize these are not b&w, but gradations between predominantly aerobic processes and where anaerobic processes start coming into play.)

2. I'll let Nobby answer that, but I think what he's getting at is that a few repetitions have a so-so effect, but by the time you do them 15-20 times, there's a cumulative response making the RPE higher - but I'm not sure.

I understand that concept, but when their descriptions in terms of time and intensity (HR) are the same for 1/4 and 1/2 effort, then I'm confused. This might be one of those times when you need to go by some other estimate, like RPE. I would probably use the duration part of the pace chart since it goes from 1 to 8 minutes, while the distance portion goes from about 3:13 (fast 400m)  to 15:45 (slow 1 mile) for the 1/4 effort. The 1/2 effort chart is a little bit faster for the distance part. (MTA: I set the race pace for the terrain I train on, not something to generate a VDOT VO2max or whatever - partly since I've never done a flat road or track race.)

I'll add that on shorter intervals, HRM don't work well because of the response time of the gadget. When I do something on the order of 30 sec up stairs, recover on the down, the HR trace is higher on the down and lower on the up - just cuz of response time.