Interval Pace and Recovery
Rest and Recovery, December 02, 2016
Ensuring the recovery is specific to the interval
One of the most frequent questions asked by clients is what Pace to run during the recovery periods between intervals. Should they stop, walk around, jog or sit down? The answer to that question depends on the client goal. By changing what you do during your rest breaks you can alter the difficulty and specific purpose of a workout.
If a client is training for shorter distances like sprint / olympic or 5K and 10K, you can run workouts at goal race pace while taking a short, jogging rest at an easy pace. These types of sessions are very race specific, they not only teach your body how to run comfortably at race pace, but by keeping the rest moving, you develop the ability to recover while running. The session we done last night was very much similar. I was looking for people to run the interval at a hard pace ( myself i was aiming for my half marathon pace ) The recover at a nice easy pace to ensure i was ready to hit the pace on my next interval.
For Half Ironman / Ironman or marathoners, you could aim to run at at 30 secs faster than target pace during the interval and even use rest as a run walk back to the start of the next interval. Running slower or run walking back will teach your body how to burn fat and clear lactate while running easy. The whole point of this type of session is to run the Interval and record some good times during the interval as EVEN as possible whilst benefitting from the recovery to ensure you can complete the next interval as efficiently as the first.
Happy Training everyone