Workout of the Day: 2,000m Breakdowns
2,000m Breakdowns
Intensity — 1Ks @ 5K pace, 600s @ 3K, 400s @ 1 Mile
Recovery — Distance of next rep
Exertion —8/10
Context & Details
This breakdown session is an extension of the 1K breakdowns in a previous WOTD. This workout sees the rep lengths doubled to 1,000m, 600m, 400m to add up to 2,000m of work per set. For the advanced 5K runner, I’ve found 4 - 6 sets to be an adequate stimulus.
This session works best for runners who have a training and high performance competitive age of over 5 years. The reason being is the extension of workloads (increases in training volumes) is the final training manipulation coaches and runners should advance. But it’s sometimes the first, and this is a mistake. Let’s look at why.
A common running half truth is “the more I run, the better I’ll be.“ I wish it were always that simple, but it’s not.
For the novice, beginner, or highly deconditioned runner, any type of new, regular exercise will result in improvement. With high school freshmen who have no running/training experience, you can have them lift weights, swim, or play basketball games 4 days a week and run only 3 times a week and their 5K cross country or 2 Mile times will improve. Why? That type of runner is not in very good general physical fitness. All those activities stimulate an increase in general physical fitness which will result in increased fitness gains across the board. Steve and my On Coaching Podcast Episode #1 in January 2015 was on this so-called Clean Slate Phenomenon. So literally, any program of regular physical exercise will improve a complete novice’s race times.
What constitutes a novice runner? My definition is anyone who has less than 3 years of training and competitive racing experience — which is the majority of high school runners.
Ideally, the progression of a novice’s training program should focus on, in order:
general physical fitness
general strength training
learning of efficient running technique/mechanics
general running related endurance
general foot speed work
First, the novice must get generally fit, then generally strong, then they need to be taught how to run efficiently from a skills/mechanics perspective, then they can do longer or steady runs for endurance upgrades as well as speed work to set the foundation of neuromuscular and coordination proficiency.
The thing to remember with novice runners is relatively small training loads lead to large performance improvements, while athletes with multiyear experience need heavier training routines to realize small performance improvements.
This is why I advocate for a progression of quality and variation of workloads for runners before increasing their running volumes. You get a lot more impact from novel stimuli than from increased amounts of familiar stimuli.
However, seasoned runners (5+ years training age) have likely been repeatedly exposed to a wide variety of stimuli so there is no new stimulus left to catalyze improvement. Therefore, increasing load volumes is the last option available to elicit improvement. But the gains from higher increases in training volumes get smaller and smaller as the volumes increase.
For example:
A male high school senior runs 33:00 in the 10K off a varied paced training program which totaled 30 miles a week. The following season, in college, training volumes are increased to 60 miles a week and they run 31:00. Two years later they run 30:00 off 90 miles a week. And their senior year they run 29:30 off 120 miles a week.
This is a grossly oversimplified example, but this stagnating rate of improvement trajectory is a common trend college coaches and runners regularly see. Increasing weekly training annually by 30 miles-a-week at first has a large impact, but then a smaller and smaller impact on performance.
The runner sees smaller returns for their work because of the accommodation feature of the adaption process. Accommodation is a general law of biology that states the response of a biological object to a constant stimulus decreases over time. Coaches and runners know this law better as the principle of diminishing returns.
Accommodation is why a varied program of training works better than a constant program of training and why simply increasing training volumes over time will not result in linear improvement.
Considering all this, hopefully you can see why today’s workout of 2K breakdowns of repeat sets of 1,000m, 600m, 400m is intended for the advanced runner, who needs large training volumes to stimulate improvement. And why the 1K breakdowns of repeat sets of 500m, 300m, 200m works better for the younger training age runner who doesn’t have to overcome the multiyear effects of accommodation to see improvement.