Intervals

[Womangolfer]

Just wondering if anyone here runs intervals and if so how. I did a quick 1/2k followed by slow 1/2k for 3 k last week but think I need more direction on this.

[UpTheStanley Graduate10]

Last week I did exactly as you did (but starting with a slow one) on a treadmill. This week I did 3 sets of 5 reps of 30:20:10 second jog-run-sprints on the road, with 2 mins walking between sets. Anything that feels good is good, provided the quick bits are quicker than your regular 5k (or whatever) pace - and the slow bits slower, natch😀

[Womangolfer Graduate10 in reply to UpTheStanley]

Thank you that’s helpful.

[UpTheStanley Graduate10]

P.S. My parkrun pace is around 12kph - on the treadmill “slow” was 10kph and “fast” 13kph, I’m aiming to increase the proportion of a 5k I can manage at 13.

[Coddfish Graduate10]

I use intervals in two different ways. They are quite different and it depends on whether your objective is distance or speed.

Longer run/walk intervals help me to do longer distances, I usually run 13 minutes, walk 2 minutes and repeat. If it’s really hot and I need to keep using water (like last week in southern England) I might run 1k then take a short walk to drink and repeat. I don’t find it easy to run distances above around 6 or 7k without doing this, and I got my PB in a 10k event through running 1k blocks interspersed with brief walks. Google run walk Jeff Galloway.

If you want to work to increase speed, the intervals are much shorter and involve some faster running. UpTheStanley mentions 1 method which variously gets called jog run sprint or 30 20 10. Clearly in this, the 10 second bits are as fast as you can go. Or you can make up any form of short interval where you run faster than normal fir some of it, jogging or walking to recover. You can use W1 or W2 of C25K, running the running sections as fast as you can and jogging (or walking if you need to) the walking bits. You can build up a pyramid of fast/slow, where you incrementally increase the length of each fast bit, or a reverse pyramid where you do the opposite.

[Womangolfer Graduate10 in reply to Coddfish]

Using c25k would be helpful thanks i will give this a go.

[Sybilw Graduate10 in reply to Womangolfer]

I’ve done the C25K week 1 too as I can’t be bothered with more apps. I’ve tried 60 sec runs but also 90 sec runs if you can get your head round remembering that when Sarah says ‘walk’ you need to run!

[Richard7 Graduate10]

I use intervals for two reasons - one to help me get some distance back in my legs and two to help improve my pace.

At the moment I am struggling with distance so have progressed from 10m intervals to 15 and now 20.

Before this current spell I have tinkered with shorter intervals. The purpose I believe is to encourage yourself to push and to do this you might want to do 200m or 400m or similar. If you have something like a Garmin you can program a Workout on your mobile and sync it with your phone. This is how I use it.

I have done the 30/20/10 also and this is great.

I think the suggestion is no more than 1 interval session a week!

[Womangolfer Graduate10 in reply to Richard7]

Thank you. I have a Garmin so I will look at this.

[Tasha99 Graduate10]

I’ve done these on different occasions:

3k static rest, 2k static rest, 1k

5x1k with static rest of about 2:30

5x800m with 200m walk back to the start

3x1 mile with 90s static rest between

All done above 5k target race pace except the 3,2,1 done at threshold