Part XII · Running workouts
Threshold Run: Hold a Faster Pace Before You Fade
Warm up easy, add four short strides, then run two to four 10-minute blocks comfortably hard with 2 easy minutes of jogging between, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
The workout
42–66 min
Threshold · Lactate clearance, sustainable race pace
Warmup
12 min
RPE 3/10 · HR 65–80%
Breathe in and out through your nose. You could keep this up for hours.
Strides
4 × 20s
RPE 6/10 · 40s jog between
Threshold
2–4 × 10 min
RPE 7/10 · HR 85–92% · 2 min jog between
In through your nose, out through your mouth. You could hold this for about 20 minutes.
Cooldown
5 min
RPE 3/10 · HR 65–80%
Breathe in and out through your nose. You could keep this up for hours.
The lesson
What it trains
Threshold is the hardest effort your body can keep in balance, clearing lactate from your muscles about as fast as it makes it. Training at it pushes that point higher, so a strong effort lasts longer before you fade.
Warm up, then four strides
About 12 easy minutes, then four 20-second strides, quick and relaxed, with 40 seconds of easy jogging between. They wake your legs up, so the first block does not feel like a shuffle.
Run 10-minute blocks
Two to four of them, smooth and even, with 2 easy minutes of jogging between. Two is a light dose and four is a full one. Then five easy minutes to finish.
Why blocks
Hold it much past twenty minutes and the effort creeps up too hard. The short jogs let you run more minutes at the right effort.
How long could you keep it up?
About twenty minutes. If you think you could hold it for an hour, you are going too slow; if only five minutes, too fast. That test finds the effort; run every block at it. You can say a short sentence, about 7 out of 10, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Don't let it creep
The effort drifts up as you settle in. Gritting your teeth or clinging to a pace means you have crossed into a harder workout than this one, which takes far longer to recover from. Ease off until the out-breath feels controlled again.
The test
The last block is run as smoothly as the first, and you finish strong rather than wrung out.
Watch for
- Starting too fast. The first minutes feel easy so you push, and the second half becomes a fight at an effort that is no longer threshold.
- Racing it. A time trial costs days of recovery and trains a harder effort than the one this run is for.
- Holding your pace up a hill or into the wind. The effort jumps past threshold; keep the effort and let the pace go.
- Skipping the warm-up and strides. The first block starts on cold legs, the first minutes feel clumsy, and you push harder to make up for it.
What is the difference between a tempo run and a threshold run?
Mostly the name. Coaches use both for a steady, comfortably hard run, and some keep tempo for a slightly easier, longer effort. Here it is one run: two to four 10-minute blocks at the effort where you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, with short easy jogs between.
How often should you do a threshold run?
Your plan spaces them for you: at most two a fortnight, counting threshold runs, rides and swims together, added one at a time as your body handles them. A threshold run only works when you arrive fresh enough to hold it smoothly.
What heart rate is a threshold run?
Around 85 to 92% of your maximum heart rate. Heart rate takes a few minutes to catch up with your effort, so go by your breathing at the start of each block and use the number as a check once it settles. Your watch guesses your maximum from your age, and that guess can be well off, so when the number and your breathing disagree, trust your breathing.
Next
VO2 Max Intervals: Raise How Much Oxygen You Can Use→The next effort up. Shorter, harder reps of three minutes, breathing in and out through your mouth, with easy jogging between.
From the book
25Lactate is fuel, not waste→