As many of you know I've been training using a program tailored for me by Tinman.  Clearly he is a far better Coach than I am a runner (he coaches many near-Elites).  But he has been gracious enough to help me this training cycle.

Much of his training focuses on running hard twice a week and running easy for 4 days otherwise.  He often has the hard training days  at "CV" pace.   "CV" stands for "Critical Velocity" and is the pace at which you can run all-out for 35 to 45 minutes.  For many of us, this is near or slightly faster than our 10K paces.  In practice CV is very close to fast tempo paces found in many other Coaches plans.  (Tinman uses "Tempo" for a different pace than others).  CV is basically where Tinman has been having me run my midweek harder workouts - at my 10K pace.

I hope Tinman doesn't mind but I pulled this response to someone else's question about adding a Tempo day to their training.  It really summarizes nicely what he believes and perhaps will foster some positive discussions on both training at Tempo and training Easy - something many people do not do (or do not like to do).

Bill

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"Yes, adding a CV workout once a week will do wonders for your racing fitness, over the long haul. The key is to balance [CV] training so that you don't burn out. Look at it this way, stored carbohydrates (glycogen) are a finite resource: you have limited amounts. If you run too fast on a daily basis, too far, you'll deplete glycogen stores, which means you'll "fry" your legs. If you add a CV workout to your training schedule, slow down the paces of your easy runs. "Frying" legs is my term for making one's legs useless or dysfunctional.

The key to training is balance and modulation (purposive variation). Balance your training, so that you alternate fast or medium paced days with slow paced days. As a general rule, you should have 3 to 4 slow running days per week, so that you primarily burn fat as the energy source. If you follow this basic rule, it's easy to integrate medium and fast paced running into your schedule and be successful.

Note: A little bit of CV works magic. 20 minutes of CV work per week, no matter what time of the year, will improve the oxidative capacity of Type IIa fibers - the ones responsible for sustained fast running over medium distances. Alternatively, you can do LT2 training, which is about 10 seconds slower per mile than CV, and shoot for about 30 minutes of training per week at this pace as your minimum.

I recommend that you include striders each week too. Even one set of 8 to 12 x 100m at a semi-quick but relaxed speed (jog 100m recoveries) will do you a lot of good.

Note: You don't have to run striders as a separate workout. You can tack them on to the end of other types of trainig - like CV intervals, Aerobic Fartleks, Tempo runs or even on long easy distance days. My suggestion for running them on longer easy run days is either run the striders slower or use longer recoveries to avoid frying your legs (burning up glycogen that you might need for faster workout days).

Regards,

Tinman