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 People love speed training, in a proud kind of way. The intensity of the experience is usually very different from the perceived effort that can be downright easy during your base phase of the season. To get the real boosts in fitness and race performance that speedwork can give you, there are a few guidelines to keep in the back of your mind that will really help supercharge those sessions. Here they are.
PROGRESSIVELY GET FASTER
The mantra for all training sessions, and especially speedwork, is to get faster as you go. Let's take a look at my favorite running interval set to see what the means. That session is 8x400m on the track with a half lap easy jog as recovery between each of the 400's. Getting progressively faster, or descending the set in coaching terms, means that the first 400 is going to be your slowest (although it MUST still be a very fast effort) and end with the lowest heart rate of the eight, and the last 400 should be your fastest with the highest heart rate. Each of the six 400's between should get progressively faster and/or have a progressively higher heart rate at the end. If say #6 of the set was your fastest interval, go back to the drawing board the next time and start out just slightly easier.
The goal at the end of all interval sessions is to have your final 1-2 intervals give you a heart rate that is approaching your max heart rate. It is at that high point that you get the biggest improvement in a magic number called your VO2max. Improving this number (something that is not really necessary to have tested unless you are curious what it is for you) will enable you to be faster at both your anaerobic heart rates as well as your aerobic ones. It just gives you more fitness across the board. In running it will be important to get as close to your max heart rate as possible. In cycling these gains come at a few beats below that, and in swimming a few beats more below your max. This is where all three sports are not created equal. Conversely, if you are only elevating your heart rate 5-10 beats above your max aerobic heart rate, this will leave you tired but without the true benefits of anaerobic interval work. It is the gray zone of training that is too fast to develop the aerobic system, but too slow to really give you big improvements in overall fitness. It is indeed where you may be racing in the bulk of your triathlons, but it is not the target of your training.
DON'T GO BEYOND YOUR MAXIMUM CAPABILITY
Fast is good up to a certain point. There is an overreached state where you can actually go faster than you are able to absorb the benefits of. There are physiological tests for this point. But the easiest marker to keep an eye out for is the point where you are pushing so hard that you lose your ability to maintain good form. You know what this looks like. In running it's when the shoulders tighten up, the head starts rocking and you look like a gyroscope spinning out of control. If you find yourself at this point in any sport in any speed session, regardless of where you heart rate is at that point you have crossed the line into the zone where you are going faster than you are ready to go. Back the effort down just a percent or two until you are able to regain good form. That is where you will be able to gain more fitness from the effort. Overreaching can lead to injury and burnout.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
A good speed session should have about 15-20 minutes of fast intervals in total. How you break this up is up to you. It can be all short intervals that last about one minute, long intervals that last 3-6 minutes or a combination. Slogging through 30-60 minutes of intervals is so much that it will be impossible to raise your heart rate high enough because of the duration of the effort. Again, it is as you approach your maximum heart rate that you get the big bang for the workout.
WARM UP AND WARM DOWN
Always ease into these sessions and ease out of them. Gradually warm up for 10-15 minutes prior to doing anything fast, even the first warm up teaser set of your session. Then before the main set, activate the lactic acid clearing systems with some short accelerations of 10-15 seconds that start to push the heart rate up.
CHOOSE YOUR TERRAIN
Most people think of speedwork as something that is done either on a track running or on a relatively flat road cycling. Those are perfect choices if your races are going to be flat. But most are not. If you have some rolling or hilly races in your future, make sure to do some of your speed sessions going uphill! You can either do repeats up a grade or hill and have the recovery be the return down to the bottom or you can use rolling terrain as the physical points of starting and ending each interval so that there is not really a regularity to the fast efforts, but rather they are more real worldly coming at you at random when you get to the next uphill or roller.
RECOVER
Build recovery into your overall training scheme when you are doing speedwork. Have enough easy sessions in a week when you are in this phase of training so that you can absorb what you are doing. The amount you will need is going to be individual. But each week try to have as many days where you feel good as there are ones where you are tired from the training.
Ready, Set, Go!
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