Experiences with Interval Training

I incorporated interval running to my training regimen last season. I was following Hal Higdon’s Advanced 1 program which prescribes 800 meter runs with 400 meter walk/jog recovery. I was able to sustain a pace of 4:00/km even as the plan ramped up to 6, 7 and 8 repetitions. You are probably thinking “Wow”.

Time to make a sheepish confession – it was all on a treadmill 🙂

It does make a difference. It’s significantly easier to keep to your target pace on a treadmill. The treadmill does kinda propel you forward and you just need to ensure that you don’t fall off. Of course the post run fatigue is similar but that’s *post-*run.

This season, I resumed interval running in earnest a few months ago and soon realized how much harder it gets when you are on a trail. Sure I changed shoes this season and the Kaikondrahalli Lake trail is also a constant work-in-progress but still… those are just excuses. I started with running the 800 meters at 5:00/km pace — turned out to be reasonably comfortable (which is a bad thing for interval runs). Soon I switched to 4:45/km pace and I was still ok at 5 repeats. I eventually got to 4:30/km but it was a lot harder to sustain for the final two repeats — getting to 4:35 often. It was still not insanely difficult so I knew there was room for improvement.

A few weeks ago, Manoj Bhat (a much faster Bangalore runner who blogs here) suggested I do things differently. He said the 400 meter rest/walk was too much recovery time and advocated a one minute rest (rest = no jogging or even walking). I tried it this morning and boy did it make a difference!

My plan was to keep doing 5 repeat intervals until I achieve the 4:30/km pace reliably. Looks like I have my work cut out for the next few weeks. Today’s repeats were 4:30 | 4:35 | 4:37 | 4:40 | 4:45. I almost didn’t run the last repeat – the mind prevailed in the first 400m and the body got its revenge in the final 400m.

Normally I run a warm-up loop (1.9k) but don’t have time for a cooldown. This morning, I did a 1km cooldown run and was pleasantly surprised to find out that my pace was 6:00 – it felt more like a 7:00 🙂 I guess this also means that I didn’t push myself hard enough.Heck – as I’m writing this post at 11am, the exhaustion is already gone and I’m not craving my second cup of coffee. Can’t wait for next Thursday.