Workout of the Day: Rono Drill
Rono Drill — 100m quick, 100m easy
Intensity — 100m @ 3K-800m effort, 100m easy
Recovery — varies
Exertion — 7/10
Context & Details
This is one of my go-to workouts in the early season, or preparation period, for 800m runners.
It’s essentially an on-track fartlek. Old-timers call this session “Jog-the-Turns-Stride-the-Straights.” I named it the Rono Drill after famed late-1970s/early-1980s world record holder Henry Rono. Call it whatever you want, what matters is it works.
I’ve found this workout to be very effective at advancing general fitness, aerobic capacity and power, resistance to fatigue, general lactate-threshold, and running economy for the half-miler.
I classify it as a general speed-endurance session, with more of an endurance focus. Doing this early in the training year sets the stage for much faster and difficult speed- endurance workouts in the heart of the season, or specific period of preparation.
It could be done off track, but most 800m runners I’ve coached like working out on the track, plus the stable surface allows them to get a better kinetic return with each step.
The definition of “quick” is purposely open-ended. The only guidance I offer is “quick” is somewhere between 3K and date 800m pace effort.
The same goes for the “easy” 100m. “Easy” can be anywhere from a walk/jog to a brisk tempo.
With fartleks, empowering the runner to atuo-regulate effort is important. It allows them to listen to their body more accurately and get the most out of the session, without worry about spilts. Many runners I’ve coached come to enjoy this session precisely because it is unburdened by the stopwatch.
Depending on the maturity of the 800m runner, I typically start off with 2 - 4 sets of 3 laps of 100m quick/100m easy.
Half-milers I coach do this workout weekly for about 10 weeks.
Progressed is advanced in a few ways:
The pace of both the “quick” and “easy” 100m speeds up.
The overall volume grows to 6-8 laps and 2-3 sets.
The rest interval between sets shortens.
You don’t need to take splits ever 100m. Instead, just record the time for however long an entire set is. Then seek to track fitness improvement by advancing the global time for each set upon future reruns of the workout. This will focus the runner on improving both the “quick” and “easy” 100m segments concurrently, rather than only one.
After 10 straight weeks of this session (I usually do it at the start of a training week on Mondays) two outcomes should result:
The 800m running will be very happy to retire this workout for the season.
And, more importantly, the runner will have a solid foundation of general speed-endurance fitness and be ready to tackle any ensuring specific endurance work.