Lydiard or Speed Endurance?

[Turlough]

This parallels a key session that i used to do back in the day. I determined the session for the very purpose you identify. Ability to dip into anaerobic effort and then recover whilst still racing hard.

The session started with sharp full effort hill loops - about 10 seconds effort, roll straight back down the hill , so the short hill loop took about 30 seconds
repeat this six times consecutively. At the end of the sixth, no break, continue the climb at high tempo effort (keeping just below anaerobic threshold) - 5 minutes long climb.
Then jog back down to the bottom
repeat the whole lot two more times.
wobble home, eat.
killer session but worth it, broke me a record.

THese are some hill sprints that Canova advocates for different types of runners. The last one, to increase strenght endurance looks a lot like your idea, so your record breaking methods are backed by current elite marathon coaches! What lenght was the race you targetted?

Agile, high frequency runner: Sprints of 60/100m with a gradient of 15% about, where they push very hard, trying long steps, for developing strenght.

(At the end of every session they go for a run of 400/500m climbing, at their max. speed (only once). This type of training has the task of using soon your strenght in direction of strenght-endurance.

100m or over of sprint, but use a hill of about 8/10 % lasting 20/25 sec. i to improve their frequency, seeking more rapidity with a good reaction in their feet, (that are not very elastic.)

Short sprints of about 40m, with a gradient of more than 30% (ramps), only for improving strenght

Runners already very strong: try to develop STRENGHT-ENDURANCE, no strenght or rapidity, already at good level.

Slim runner with long strides. Use short sprints climbing (about 15% of gradient) twice a week, going with very high knees and high frequency.

Dev. strenght-endurance: At the end of every hill sprint session go for a run of 400/500m climbing, at max. speed (only once). This type of training has the task of using soon your strenght in direction of strenght-endurance.

Thank god.. I'm also similarly challenged.. but either way it's 6:36 or 6:40.. 10% of 6:00 is 0:36.. so 10% slower is 6:36.. or 6:00/9*10 = 6:40..

which in incidentally what I do most of my long runs at.. well 85-90%.. never worked it out by that just happens to be around 6:35-6:45 pace..

I like the idea of reps in the pace, but that's essentially the old Charlie Spedding session isn't it.. reps at marathon pace with recovery at ~ 1 min off that.. so I do 6 min/mile and 7 min mile recovery..

Recovery pace is significantly faster: around 6:40 (only 10% slower than race pace) to make the session more specific and harder (pace is at RP for most of the session and never dropping below 10% RP for the entire session). I took a snapshot of the training paces calculated for a six minute mile marathon for teh different phases. The fundamental phase has a lot of the short medium and long tempo, progression runs as well as sessions, (reps 10k pace at the very fastest, apart from uphill sprints, strides etc). The LOng run you do continues all the way to the specific phase (once every 3 weeks there).


training paces below, also a sample 3 weeks in this article

*Note there is an INtroductory phase of 8-10 weeks before the fundamental phase the elites do which includes circuits mixed with HM paces reps (400s), weights and some long runs.

Some of the sessions arent relvant to anyone slower than 2:10, id wager eg the 45-50 k run, 30k pace run etc. but knowing the progression of session paces through the phases to the race pace sessions are useful i think.
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