A Year-Round Speed Program for Mid-Distance Runners, Part II

I apologize for my absence from posting and finishing this series. In contrast to the indoor season where we have 5 home meets, once outdoor track begins we are traveling almost every weekend. If I'm not traveling with the team, I'm traveling to one of my own races. Weekends usually mean Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday, and the office work doesn't cease so I have to get a week's worth of work done on Monday and Tuesday most of the time. Fortunately as school is out and the only athletes left are our Regional qualifiers, things have calmed down a lot.

When I last left you, we had discussed top-end speed development. Hopefully we all have a faster top gear now. That will be helpful, but the heart and soul of mid-distance running is in the athlete's ability to run fast for an extended period of time while dealing with lactic acid production. In this post I will cover the transition to lactic workouts and lactate tolerance work. We begin with some lactate tolerance workouts, also known as speed endurance. By the end of the weekend, I'll cover the race-specific training and taper that take us through the heart of the season.

TRANSITION TO LACTATE TOLERANCE WORKOUTS

After a fall of fast top end work and slower lactate threshold work, the move to lactate tolerance workouts is a challenge. That once-familiar burn has been absent for three or four months. The strange weakness in your legs, the cramping in your shoulder, and that monkey on your back all welcome you to the world of oxygen indebtedness. For reasons unknown, your mouth tastes like you're chewing on a couple fresh copper pennies; your calves protest with a dull ache before you delve into the next repeat and the dullness rapidly sharpens; you recover quickly between reps but start swimming quickly within each rep despite the fact that the only pools on this track are the ones formerly known as your legs, now filling with lactic acid.

HILLS
That's right, you get to do more hills in this phase. What's more, they're about to get a lot harder.

Hills can be a great special speed endurance workout for the fact that they force your legs to work harder than they would on flat ground, resulting in greater lactic acid production. The short hills I described in PART I are too brief to generate large amounts of lactic acid, so to achieve this training effect I use longer, more gradual hills. A 250m to 300m hill at a 4-6% grade will do the job. Walk/jog down recovery. The effort should be hard, between 800m and 1500m effort. Often, this effort seems easy until the last 100m and that is where the training effect is. The monkey jumps on your back and you have to push through it. Start with 6 of these hills and build to a maximum of 10 or 12.

SHORT REPS, SHORT REST
As you return to the track for more specific workouts, you should use workouts that involve short repeats with short recoveries to ease your return. 1500m or mile race pace is a good pace to use in these workouts as it stimulates a lot of lactic acid production but still allows you to recover enough to do a moderately high volume.

When I trained under Dennis Barker with Team USA Minnesota, we would often do 20 to 24x 200m with 45 seconds rest at mile pace. The reps are long enough that you achieve some lactate tolerance training, but there are frequent bouts of short rest so that you can find a nice rhythm that almost feels like a tempo run. Start with 12-16 of these 200's and build to 20 or 24.

PROGRESSION to LONGER REPS, MORE REST
From there, I would move to the following:
3-4 sets of 4x300m; 45s between reps, 3-4 minutes between sets.
2 sets of 6-10x400m; 1:00 between reps, 3-5 minutes between sets.
12-16x400m; 1:30 between reps.
5-8x600m; 3:00 between reps.

As you can see, these workouts get more dense as they progress. It will quickly move away from the rhythmic, tempo-run feeling of the 200's. The workouts become more race specific to the 1500m/ mile in this manner.

"BROKEN" REPEAT WORKOUTS
Once you have done some dense workouts like the ones above, you can test yourself with some very race-specific workouts that I call "broken" repeats. These workouts make your body think you are running one long repeat, but your mind breaks it down and it becomes a little easier. Don't worry, it'll still be really hard.

Broken 600's: 5-6x {400, 200} (30s rest between reps, 3:00 between sets) Run 1500m pace for the 400's and 800m pace for the 200's.

Broken 1000's: 3-5x {300, 500, 200} (30-45s between reps, 3-4 mins between sets) Run 1500m pace on the 500, slightly faster for the 300 and the 200.

GEAR CHANGERS
If you're going to be racing a 1500 or mile, it's good to practice changing gears and finishing. A couple workouts that address this are as follows:

800, 600, 400, 4x200 (2-3 mins rest) Begin at Mile race pace and squeeze it down just 1-2 seconds per 400m on each repeat.

4x {500, 400, 300} (1:00 between reps, 3:00 between sets): Run the 500 at slightly faster than 3000m goal pace, the 400m at 1500m goal pace, and the 300m between 800m and 1500m goal paces.

4x {600, 400, 200} (1:00 between reps, 3:00 between sets): Run the 600 at 3000m goal pace, the 400 at 1500m goal pace, and the 200 at 800m goal pace. Very similar to workout above.

If you have addressed all of the above workout groups, you will be quite well-prepared to run a fast 1500 or mile because they are all fairly specific to that race. 800m runners have another step to go in their race-specific preparation: lactic capacity work, which is also very important for milers. I'll address it in PART III.

SECONDARY WORKOUTS and PHASING
The aforementioned workouts are done 1-2 times per week beginning in November or December for collegiate athletes. In November, December, and January, (and then again at the start of outdoors in March/April) we will also do VO2 Max workouts and/or some cruise intervals and/or tempo runs about once or twice per week. We will also continue the top-end speed work as outlined in PART I. Once the racing season hits full stride in February, we tend to use VO2 Max work sparingly as it is pretty tiring. We would shift to cruise intervals or tempo runs once per week to maintain aerobic ability. If there is a week without a race, we may put a VO2 Max session in there. Bear in mind that most of these lactate tolerance workouts involve a significant VO2 Max element as well-- every workout is a combination of several training effects, but I just categorize them by the primary training effect.

MAIN TRAINING ELEMENTS BY MONTH
This is geared for the type of runner who would qualify for Indoor NCAA's and Outdoor NCAA Regionals/Nationals and maybe USATF Championships or Olympic Trials in the 800m or 1500m. The 800m runners do slightly more Lactic Capacity work and slightly less Lactate Tolerance work; the 1500m specialists do vice-versa.

AUGUST
Return to Training, Progression, Aerobic + strides

SEPTEMBER
Lactate Threshold, Hills, Downhills

OCTOBER
Lactate Threshold, VO2 Max, Hills, Accelerations, Downhills, Light Speed

NOVEMBER
Lactate Threshold, VO2 Max, Hills, Accelerations, Downhills, Light Speed

DECEMBER
Lactate Threshold, VO2 Max, Lactate Tolerance, Accelerations, Light Speed

JANUARY
Lactate Threshold, Lactate Tolerance, Accelerations, Flys, Light Speed

FEBRUARY
Lactate Threshold, Lactate Tolerance, Lactic Capacity, Flys

early MARCH
Lactate Threshold, Lactic Capacity, Light Speed (until NCAAs, then March becomes like April)

MARCH/APRIL Lactate Threshold, VO2 Max, Lactate Tolerance, maybe Lactic Capacity (depending on how long the athlete's season will go), Hills, Flys

MAY
Lactate Threshold, Lactate Tolerance, Lactic Capacity, Light Speed

JUNE
Lactate Threshold, Lactic Capacity, Light Speed

JULY
Finish season similar to June, then Rest/Recover

The only workouts here which I have not yet specifically addressed are Lactic Capacity workouts, and they are the subject of PART III, the final installment in this series.