

While the symmetry of running exactly one lap around the track is appealing, you can also hit the roads or trails for a comparable interval session like a 20 x (1:00 minute hard + 1:00 minute easy). Alternatively, if you’re focused on shorter races like 5Ks, you might start with shorter, speedier intervals, progressing from 20 × 200 to 20 × 300 to 20 × 400, each time with a 200-meter jog recovery.īe creative – Of course, there’s nothing magical about 20 × 400. Plan to hit 20 × 400 four to six weeks before your goal race. How do you implement 400m repeats into your own training? Alex suggests to build gradually – “Start with a more modest workout like 10 × 400, and do the workout every week or two, adding on two to four repeats each consecutive time. Other elite athletes known to include 400m repeats into their training include Mo Farah, Paula Radcliffe, Kenenisa Bekele, Matt Centrowitz. Another common workout Kipchoge incorporates 400m intervals into is 10 x 800m (in around 2:10) followed by 10 x 400m (in 62-64). Marathon World Record holder Eliud Kipchoge schedules 400m repeats into his training at least once every month, completing workouts such as 25 to 30 x 400m repeats in 62-64 seconds with 30-60 seconds rest, depending on where he is in his training cycle.
MILE REPEATS REST TIME HOW TO
The 400-meter distance was ideal, Ryun said, because “it’s short enough that you can run pretty fast, but you can recover and do it again and again.” Here’s how to harness the power of repetition in your own training. Then there was Jim Ryun, the last American to hold the mile world record, who did the same workout in high school in the 1960s (also completing as many as 40 repeats). Before the 1952 Games, he upped it to 40 x 400 daily. Legendary runner Emil Zatopek of the Czech Republic, who won the 5,000, 10,000, and marathon at the 1952 Olympics, reportedly ran 20 x 400 with 200-meter recovery every day before the 1948 Olympics, with hard 200-meter repeats before and after. This type of workout has a long and colourful pedigree. But the benefits, he argued, are “as much spiritual or philosophical as they are physiological.” So many stops and starts demand a hyper focused state of mind and cultivate a meditative rhythm-and the physical challenge of completing the workout leaves you with a sense of mastery that you’ll bring to your next race. Depending on your pace, each repeat might take somewhere between one and two minutes-shorter than the “optimal” length. Joyner suggested building up to doing 20 x 400 meters with a 200-meter jog after each repeat. So it was a surprise when the leader of that team, Mayo Clinic physiologist and training guru Michael Joyner, promoted a very different workout in a recent blog post. The sweet spot for boosting aerobic fitness, they determined, was repeats that lasted three to five minutes each.
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Alex Hutchinson, researcher and writer for Outside Magazine recently wrote an insightful post on the benefits of 400m Repeats.Ī few years ago, a team of researchers combed through four decades of training studies to determine the most effective type of interval workout.
