Operation Move
Online Running Coaching
This workout is demanding but fun and gives you plenty of breaks (my kind of quality work!)
1km Warm Up
1km Easy
200m Sprint
200m Recovery
400m Fast
200m Recovery
1km Tempo
200m Recovery
400m Fast
200m Recovery
200m Sprint
1km Cool Down
This run is a total of 6km, but you can halve the distances if you’d like a shorter run. Don’t skimp on the warm up! You’ll enjoy your run a whole lot more if you take the time to be properly ready to go.
This workout is a great option if you are 5km training or if you want to focus on having a kick at the end of your runs. If you are a person who struggles with a fast finish, then this is a great one to try.
You can do it as a quality session through the week, or in place of your long run.
Run at an easy pace for 50 minutes
Run at your tempo pace for 25 minutes
Then do 4 x 0:30 hill sprints up a steep hill at maximum speed with jogging return recoveries.
Walking or easy run cool down for 10 minutes.
If that’s a longer run than you would normally do, you can shorten it up by doing a 30 minute easy run, 15 minute tempo run, followed by the 4 hill sprints.
This is a bit of a riff on the Yasso Marathon Predictor, and although it might or might not work as a predictor for you – it did for me. Keep in mind that with predictor workouts they are only an indicator and all of the other areas of your training have to be on board. In theory, someone without specifically half training could run fast 800m repeats and it doesn’t mean they can replicate that for a half marathon. But if you’ve been half marathon training and everything has been going well, this one can help you pin-point where your pacing might be for the day.
So this is 6 x 800m Intervals with 400m Recoveries between each.
The key to any good quality session is warm up. And I mean really warm up. So that is usually 2-3km of easy running and about 4 strides of 100m accelerations with about 1-2 minutes of walking between each to wake up your legs and get them ready for what they are about to do.
I ran my 800m in an average time of 3:32. So for my predictor I look at that in hours and minutes instead of minutes and seconds. so 3 hours and 32 minutes. I then take off 10 minutes (3 hours, 22 minutes) and I then divide by 2. Which gives me 1 Hour and 41 minutes for my half prediction. (I actually ran 1:40:40). Those calculations are just because it’s converting it from marathon time to half marathon time – but here’s a handy table so you don’t have to do the math
2:40 800m Intervals (3:20 min/km pace): 1 Hour 15 Minute Half
2:50 800m Intervals (3:32 min/km pace): 1 Hour 20 Minute Half
3:00 800m Intervals (3:45 min/km pace): 1 Hour 25 Minute Half
3:10 800m Intervals (3:57 min/km pace): 1 Hour 30 Minute Half
3:20 800m Intervals (4:09 min/km pace): 1 Hour 35 Minute Half
3:30 800m Intervals (4:22 min/km pace): 1 Hour 40 Minute Half
3:40 800m Intervals (4:35 min/km pace): 1 Hour 45 Minute Half
3:50 800m Intervals (4:47 min/km pace): 1 hour 50 Minute Half
4:00 800m Intervals (5:00 min/km pace): 1 Hour 55 Minute Half
4:10 800m Intervals (5:12 min/km pace): 2 Hour Half
4:20 800m Intervals (5:24 min/km pace): 2 Hour 5 Minute Half
4:30 800m Intervals (5:37 min/km pace): 2 Hour 10 Minute Half
4:40 800m Intervals (5:50 min/km pace): 2 Hour 15 Minute Half
4:50 800m Intervals (6:02 min/km pace): 2 Hour 20 Minute Half
5:00 800m Intervals (6:15 min/km pace): 2 Hour 25 Minute Half
5:10 800m Intervals (6:27 min/km pace): 2 Hour 30 Minute Half
5:20 800m Intervals (6:39 min/km pace): 2 Hour 35 Minute Half
5:30 800m Intervals (6:52 min/km pace): 2 Hour 40 Minute Half
5:40 800m Intervals (7:04 min/km pace): 2 Hour 45 Minute Half
5:50 800m Intervals (7:17 min/km pace): 2 Hour 50 Minute Half
6:00 800m Intervals (7:30 min/km pace): 2 Hour 55 Minute Half
The trick with this workout is to start out slow. Really it should be about 1:30 slower than your 10km pace. And then speed up by about 30 seconds each km. So for me it might look like this:
Recovery: 7:15, Easy: 6:45, Steady: 6:15, Tempo: 5:45, Fast: 5:15.
So you would aim to start 2:00 min/km slower than what you finish at. This is a great way to do a tempo style run with a really great warm up built in and you can really get into some nice fast paced running at the end because you’ve started with a really easy pace to begin with.
I have a fun one for you this week! As you move through the workout, there’s more and more easy running. Which is a nice change, right? But it also kind of means that those paces should be getting a whole lot faster as you go through as well. The workout is 30 minutes but there is only fifteen minutes of fast running in there so that should mean you will be able to up the pace a bit!
If you want to challenge yourself, you could reverse it so it gets harder and harder.
Happy running!