Intervals?

[Katiepops]

Just read a post by Beachcomber66 . Can someone explain intervals to me. I’m a bit dim about all of this, but everyone swears by it as a training method. Should I be doing It?

[Beachcomber66 Graduate10]

Hi Katiepops. I am a newcomer to intervals; I blame Dexy5 for tempting me over to the dark side. On her advice I use JogRunSprint, a really simple free app on IPhone. You can set a warm up period, and it then tells you when to do a 30 second jog, followed by a 20 second run and then a 10 second "sprint". The pattern then repeats as many times as you want (or in my case until you feel you have had enough!). It has 2 minute walks built in, but I just jog through them. Nothing more to it than that. It has certainly speeded me up on shorter runs; part of it is just caused by confidence that I can push my 67 year old frame a bit harder than I thought, and some of it is topping up a very gradual build up of fitness. I only do it one run in three though; that is definitely enough. It's just a bit of fun running slightly faster than I thought I could😊.

[Tasha99 Graduate10]

Short sprints with longer walk/slow run recovery. I’ve never done them and am still improving. My pace increases with longer distances run and hill training.

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate10]

Intervals as there are in C25K up to week 6 run 2 (apart from run 3 of week 5) are when you are running a little and also walking, the word interval refers to the walking breaks.

In week 1 there are 7 walking parts, gradually decreasing to 1 three minutes in week 6 run 2 with ten minutes of running before and after that walk.

I am fairly new to this, HIIT or high intensity interval training is a little different again, on that you never walk but have short fast runs with shorter short runs, my late wife used to officiate at many athletic meetings, I think I can sort of remember what she told me about athletics..

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate10]

nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/i...

womensrunninguk.co.uk/train...

Some interesting information... and intervals are really good fun too

[Couchpotato2 in reply to Oldfloss]

That’s really interesting. Do you think that it’s ok to increase speed as they say or do you think it should be incremental? Basically if my next goal is to run a 5km in 30’, should I try to run each segment at that pace?

I suppose i can progressively increase segment duration.

[Katiepops Graduate10]

Ok I think I get it. I’ve now got the app JogRunSprint and I’ll give it a go after taking my partner to the MK half marathon tomorrow, or better still do it while he’s running! 😊