Ultra Short Training At Race Pace

I set a variation on this for our group on Tuesday evening. We did 30x25 on 40. This is slightly more rest than prescribed by the method but my thinking was that: We have a variety of ages and fitness levels We have people doing different strokes We have different ability levels We don't have a coach on the side to keep control! Therefore, I wanted us all to go off the same interval. Personally, I set off on 18s reps (a couple of 17s) on ***, and pretty much did all 30. At one end you have to turn right round to see the clock, so I may have just done a couple of 19s but close enough. We did it so that if you missed the time you stopped and joined back in again after 50m. It was hard but doable and I think I'd keep the rest about the same, even though we had a couple of freestylers kicking around the 14s mark. I'm one of the fitter members of the team and was just finding that I had to really focus the effort towards the end to make the time. I'd say a good half dropped. It may be that not everyone was at the right pace - some of the group don't really deal in race pace as they don't race. I was really tired at the end - and it was definitely a different kind of tired. It was very aerobic, but also hard muscularly. It though it might end up feeling more lactic, but as the paper suggests, it didn't. Most importantly, feedback was that people really enjoyed doing the set and it made a nice change. So, I'd definitely adding something like this to the mix.

I set a variation on this for our group on Tuesday evening. We did 30x25 on 40. This is slightly more rest than prescribed by the method but my thinking was that: We have a variety of ages and fitness levels We have people doing different strokes We have different ability levels We don't have a coach on the side to keep control! Therefore, I wanted us all to go off the same interval. Personally, I set off on 18s reps (a couple of 17s) on ***, and pretty much did all 30. At one end you have to turn right round to see the clock, so I may have just done a couple of 19s but close enough. We did it so that if you missed the time you stopped and joined back in again after 50m. It was hard but doable and I think I'd keep the rest about the same, even though we had a couple of freestylers kicking around the 14s mark. I'm one of the fitter members of the team and was just finding that I had to really focus the effort towards the end to make the time. I'd say a good half dropped. It may be that not everyone was at the right pace - some of the group don't really deal in race pace as they don't race. I was really tired at the end - and it was definitely a different kind of tired. It was very aerobic, but also hard muscularly. It though it might end up feeling more lactic, but as the paper suggests, it didn't. Most importantly, feedback was that people really enjoyed doing the set and it made a nice change. So, I'd definitely adding something like this to the mix.