Ahh, intervals. They’re your favorite, right? You wake up every day and say, hell yeah, I wanna do THAT!
In my experience, most people hate intervals. With a burning fiery passion. BUT, most people also either A) don’t really know what intervals are and just avoid them because someone they know whines about their coach making them do ’em, or B) are doing them wrong.
In the interest of getting everyone on the same page, I’m going to start from the very beginning:
What is an interval?
Technically, a set of “intervals” is just a workout with different speeds over different time intervals. However, in common parlance, “intervals” are used to refer to the work intervals, or the hard parts.
The benefit of changing speeds in a workout is that you can hold a pace higher than your race pace for a certain amount of time, recover for a bit, and do it again several times. For example, an athlete may be able to run three 6-minute miles in a row. However, in an interval workout, she may be able to run SIX 6-minute miles with rest in between. This DOUBLES the amount of time she had spent at her goal pace, give her a much higher training stimulus than if she had just gone out and run three straight miles.
If distance training is the bread of endurance training, intervals are the butter. Without intervals, your training plan is just burnt, bare toast.
How do I do intervals properly?
1. WARMUP! A five minute jog will NOT cut it. The absolute optimal warmup is your race warmup. The full race warmup takes time, however, so a 20-30 minute progressively harder effort will usually suffice for this.
2. With very few exceptions, interval workouts should be done at a constant and/or increasing speed. Let’s go back to the 6-minute miler above. Let’s say she runs the intervals in 5:45, 5:55, 6:05, 6:15, 6:20, and 6:30.
Intervals at/below goal pace: TWO
Average pace: 6:08
Feel: Dogshit
——————
Better, is if she runs them in 6:05, 6:00, 6:00, 5:55, 5:55, and 5:50.
Intervals at goal pace: 5
Average pace: 5:57
Felt like: First couple feel good, and the last two hurt.
You almost need to think about the first one or two intervals as being part of the warmup, and backing off the pace a tiny bit. This will enable you to run much faster later in the workout, which is optimal.
WHERE do I do intervals?
There are two main ways to do intervals
1. In-Session intervals
In Session intervals are completed along your run/ride/ski. You simply go harder during parts.
These can prescribed be based on time:
In Session Intervals: 5X(3m Zone4, 3m Zone 1)
or based on terrain:
In Session Intervals: Zone 4 on the climbs, Zone 1 on the flats and downs, until you reach 20 minutes of time in Zone 4
2. Repeats Intervals.
Repeats are performed by using the SAME stretch of ground for all the work periods of the intervals. For example, track workouts and hill repeats are Repeat Intervals.
Repeats are a more effective session because you have more control, and a much better idea of pacing.
Repeats can be prescribed based on time, distance, or terrain.
Repeat Intervals: 5X (4m Z4, 3m Z1)
Repeat Intervals: 5X (1-mile Z4, 400m Z1)
Repeat Intervals: 5X (2 minute hill Z4, Z1 back down).
Hopefully this gives you a good guide of the basics of intervals. Intervals really are the BEST and FASTEST way to improve performance.
Tomorrow I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of lengths/rest periods.
