TRAINING TIPS: Mixing It Up – Track Variations

During a hot summer spent in Vermont, my sister joined up with a running club that met every Wednesday night at the University of Vermont track. Each week, the leader announced the same workout in his Boston drawl: “A quarter [pronounced quowta], a half, a three-quarter, a mile, a three-quarter, a half and a quarter.” I think of that workout every time I’m leading a group at the track and probably take things to the other extreme – very rarely do my track groups repeat even a single workout during a season.

Running on the track doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t always have to be lung-bustingly tough. (Yes, I know that lung-bustingly isn’t a word, but it seems like the perfect way to describe that can’t-quite-get-a-breath feeling at the end of a good, hard set.) This month I thought I’d present some of my favourite track sets. No, you don’t need to be an elite runner to do these workouts. On Tuesday mornings, a group of us from Canadian Running magazine get together and work our way through some of these sets. (It’s amazing – the older we get, the better we were when we did these workouts 20 to 30 years ago.) Regardless of your experience or training level, make sure you work at an appropriate pace – for many of these intervals, that would be your goal race pace – to see some improvements in your race times this season.

1)      200m turnover sets: After missing my goal time for the third straight 400m interval in a row one hot, summer afternoon, my university coach, Dave Grant, took my watch away and told me to just do some 200m intervals with a 200m jog. “How fast? How many?” I asked. “Who cares,” he said. “Have fun.” The set is exceedingly simple: after your warmup, throw your watch into the infield and run as many 200m (halfway around an outdoor track) intervals as you’d like, but give yourself a time limit of, say, 20 minutes). Focus on maintaining a good turnover, a nice forward position and getting up on your toes. Jog easily for 200m as your recovery.

2)      Pyramid sets. Any variation of a pyramid set – 400, 600, 800, 600, 400 – can be a lot of fun. You can even make that workout more interesting by maintaining the same pace all the way through. This is a great way to work on your pacing, making sure you run the 400m at a pace that you can maintain for a mile isn’t easy. You can vary the pace based on the distance (400m fast, one mile steady). Some other pyramid sets I like are much shorter: 100/ 200/ 300/ 400/ 500/ 400/ 300/ 200/ 100m all with 100m jog recovery.

3)      5-minute drill. This was an old standby with virtually all of my track groups. At some workouts, we included this early in the set; other times it came at the end. The set is run by time (it’s ideal if someone can whistle when it’s time to change paces) and includes: 30 seconds hard/30 seconds easy, 15 seconds hard/15 seconds easy, 30 seconds hard/30 seconds easy, 15 seconds hard/15 seconds easy, 30 seconds hard/30 seconds easy and ends with one minute hard. The year that four of my 800m runners competed at the Olympic trials, they would routinely complete a mile during this set.

4)      Limited recovery sets: These are another standby for my training groups. They include 200m intervals on 1:00 to 1:30 or 400m intervals on 2:00 to 2:30. The goal of these sets is to never completely recover after each interval, which simulates the uncomfortable feeling you’re likely to endure during a personal-best performance at a 5K or 10K race. Our ultimate 5K fitness test workout during my university running days was 12-16 x 400m with 100m jog recovery. If you could do those intervals at your goal race pace, you knew you were ready.

Running on the track can be a great way to work on your foot speed, technique and pacing. Make sure that you build into your workouts slowly – aim for less than you think you can do to start and gradually increase the volume and intensity as the summer progresses. Unless you’re a full-fledged track runner, once a week or even once every two weeks will be enough to see some reasonable gains.