Workout of the Day: 2 x 10,000m + 10 x 1,000m
2 x 10,000m + 10 x 1,000m
Intensity — 1st 10K @ Marathon pace, 2nd 10K @ 1/2 Marathon pace, 1Ks @ 15K pace
Recovery — 5 minutes after 10Ks, 90” after 1K reps
Exertion — 9/10
Context & Details
This a session designed by Renato Canova for the marathoner. It happens in his Specific Period. This type of session replaces the popular slow-paced Long Run in that period.
You read that right: Canova’s marathoners do not perform any long slow runs in the final 10 weeks of preparation before a marathon.
His marathoners do this session once or twice, or a variant of it, in the Specific Period to condition themselves specifically for the demands of the 26.2 mile race.
I’ve touched on Canova’s periodization progression (Transition/Recuperation > General > Fundamental > Specific) before, but it’s worth revisiting to unpack why his method of training marathoners is so effective and consistent at regularly producing high-level performances while most other methods are spotty at best.
To me, the crux of it comes down to Canova’s understanding of General vs. Specific workloads.
Canova’s marathoners are usually “low mileage,” only covering 70 - 90 miles a week (some may cover up to 120 miles on occasion, but that is the rare upper limit). Many western readers may be perplexed by this. How can a marathoner only run 70 - 90 miles a week and run 2:05 or better, as Canova’s male runners regularly do?
The answer lies in the difference between General vs. Specific volume.
In the early periods of development, Recuperation and General, Canova’s runners do slow paced long runs to “prepare the body structurally” as he puts it. They do a lot of general running to create a “structural base” that has no direct correlation to race performance other than it that allows them to build off of it in training in future periods of development.
Then in the Fundamental and Specific period the running they do gets more specific, meaning faster. For example, long slow runs transition to becoming workouts like this one or 6K,5K,4K,3K,2K,1K with 1K steady (don’t worry I’ll cover this in session in a future WOTD). His runners are still logging 30K - 35K of volume on an outing, but now that volume is at specific paces relevant to the conditioning to the goal marathon race pace.
Canova’s masterstroke is this:
In the Specific period, 50% of the weekly training volume is at 87% - 110% of goal marathon race pace. The other 50% is at super slow recovery speeds.
For example, if you’re running 80 miles a week and trying to run a 2:05 (4:46/mile pace) marathon, 40 miles are performed at ~5:20/mile pace or faster. The other 40 miles are at 8:00/mile pace or slower, as their purpose is solely to facilitate recovery between the faster running workouts.
This is what Canova calls “Modulation” of intensity and volume in the Specific Period. And it works really well. I coach using this method of training intensity distribution with my runners in their Specific period and has produced fantastic results year after year.
Here’s the thing: this style of preparation in running is nothing new. Bowerman did it (think 30/40 drill), Igloi (think shortening the rest intervals on track workouts), Holmer (Fartlek), Zatopek (40 x 400m), Warhurst (The Michigan Workout) etc.
Specifically, why is this workout so effective?
A big reason is it exposes a marathoner to high concentrations of lactate.
And remember: the most effective way to teach muscle cells to handle lactate and pyruvate quickly is to expose them to high concentrations of the two compounds, and for runners that means fast-paced training. This will create the conditions for a super-compensation effect in the body which will restructure cells to more readily accept and use lactate as the super fuel it is rather than shunt it into the bloodstream where it becomes acidic and results in an aggressive slowing down.