Interval training

If you run interval sessions you will get faster.
It is the single best form of running activity you can do. Just think about it for a moment, if all you do is steady running then all you will be good at is running at a steady pace. This is the common mistake that so many people make when training. They think they are training hard by going out and running miles and miles at a steady pace. This does get you fitter but not faster. By steady running you improve your endurance capacity, tone-up and often lose weight, but you don’t get faster.

The key to improve your speed is to change pace and run at speeds faster than you would race at. However, you can only run at these faster-than-race speeds for small periods of time as they are hard work. This is why you break the distance up into smaller chunks to run at a faster pace.

For example, if you normally go for a steady five mile run you could change it to five lots of one mile efforts, running the one miles at a significantly faster pace than you would if you were running the whole five miles in one go. The important thing about interval running is to pick the pace up and force yourself to increase the leg speed. Then you will need to recover, as you won’t be able to keep it up for too long.

The recovery period will vary depending on how fit you are and what type of session you are running. Generally, beginners will need a lot more recovery than seasoned runners and the longer the interval run, the longer the recovery period will have to be.

All the energy pathways should be involved in interval training, making it very similar to the race situation:

The short sprints with long recovery involve the pure sprint system.

The longer repetitions, which are run quickly with a short recovery, involve the lactate system (burning legs syndrome).

The consistent steady running, strides and recovery stages, involve the oxygen system (you can talk during these sections).

Interval sessions don’t need to be run flat out all the time. You should aim for one structured interval workout a week and one unstructured one. The structured one will be set in advance with set intervals to run and set recovery times. The unstructured one can be decided on the day depending on where you are running (on or off roads, hilly or on tarmac).

Below are a few interval sessions you can have a go at over the coming weeks. They are split into three groups so be realistic as to what you can achieve. Interval sessions normally make you work a lot harder than just steady running so take this into account and start on a lower grade for the first few attempts. Remember to warm-up for at least ten minutes before the session and cool-down for the same amount after the session.

Beginner runner
10 x 1 min with 3 mins walk recovery.
5 x 2 mins with 2 mins walk recovery.
3 min, then 2 min, then 1 min, with 3 minutes walk recovery between reps. Do this 3 times with 5 minutes between sets.
3 x 5 mins with 4 mins walk recovery.
10 x 45 seconds uphill running with a walk back down recovery.

Intermediate runner
12 x 1 minute with 90 seconds recovery.
6 to 8 x 2 minutes with 60 seconds recovery.
4 x (3 min / 2 min / 1 min) with 2 mins and 1 min recovery between reps and 3 mins recovery between sets.
5 x 5 minutes with 2 mins recovery.
10 to 15 x 60 secs uphill running with a jog back down as your recovery.

Advanced runner
15 x 1 min with 60 secs recovery.
10 x 2 mins with 60 secs recovery.
5 x (5min / 4 min / 3min / 2 min / 1 min) with 4 min / 3 min / 2 min / 1 min recovery between reps and 3 mins recovery between sets.
5 to 8 x 5 mins with 90 secs recovery.
15 to 20 x 60 secs uphill running with a brisk jog back down as your recovery.