Interval recovery time

dna_leri

Any advise on how much recovery time I should take between intervals?

I use a heart rate monitor, so is it best to wait until my heart rate has recovered to a certain % of maximum or use a fixed time, such as the same time as the interval? Does it matter if I walk, jog or rest between intervals?

e.g. If I am doing 800m intervals in 3 mins, should I take 3 mins jog recovery, or walk/rest until my heart rate recovers to 60% of maximum? Would the same hold for 400m intervals?

I have read a bit on other websites but I am not getting a clear answer. Any help here is appreciated. Let me know what works for you.

cfitz

It depends on what you are trying to acheive from the session. It's very much a science and I struggle to understand it precisely. Perhaps someone else here could put it into coherent words.

thirtyfoot

Yes there are many variations based on what you are trying to achieve. There is a good article in Track Coach at the moment by Frank Horwill on the history of running systems and it talks a lot about intervals and the variations on them.

One gauge for when to do your next interval is when your heartrate is back at 120, think it was a German in the 30's who came up with that one. Others do repeats, whereby your recovery is exactly the same as the interval you have run in timewise. Then you have fartlek. There are many variations and it depends on what you are trying to achieve and after that a bit of intuition. When starting years ago with my father he used the 'when back to the 120 bpm' gauge and I think that is a good starter. Recovery can be walk, run. To give an example of the variations of interval training for one athlete (myself) within one season here is what I was doing for parts of this season:

Nov:
3 sets of 600m-5mins-500m-4mins-400m-3mins-300m with 8 mins between sets (essentially focusing on endurance or special endurance)

May:
300m - 10mins - 200m - 6 mins - 150m (focussing on speed endurance)

Very, very different intervals because I'm looking for different things at each time of the year. Time and pacing and recovery would be different too, eg, 300 is November in around 45secs and in May would be 36secs. In April/May I am trying to simulate what will be going down in a race, eg, being flooded with lactic and trying to maintain speed/form/technique.

My point being, asked yourself why are you doing the intervals and then make your timings/recoveries based on that.

sobriquet

Tingle wrote: »

One gauge for when to do your next interval is when your heartrate is back at 120, think it was a German in the 30's who came up with that one.

I'm currently reading Run Fast by Hal Higdon, I'm trying to up my speed and stamina. Talking about intervals he mentions two marks: 90% MHR during the sprint, 70% MHR during recovery, ie not to begin sprinting again until your heart rate is back down to 70%.

I still haven't quite got my head around that chapter though I've read it twice. Tried it for the first time on tuesday, and as a guide the 90/70 marks seemed to work. With my fitness though that mightn't have been hard...

dna_leri

Tingle wrote: »

Yes there are many variations based on what you are trying to achieve.
One gauge for when to do your next interval is when your heartrate is back at 120, think it was a German in the 30's who came up with that one. Others do repeats, whereby your recovery is exactly the same as the interval you have run in timewise.
My point being, asked yourself why are you doing the intervals and then make your timings/recoveries based on that.

Thanks for the inputs so far. I am doing the intervals as speed workouts to try to improve my 5K & 10K times.
I have tried doing both the recover to ~120 bpm (takes about 1.5 mins if I just stop/rest after a 3 min half mile) and the jog for same duration as interval (3 mins after half mile, HR is at about 150 bpm. Not sure which way is the best to achieve result?
I also find with the recover to 120 bpm, there is opportunity to vary the time, depending on whether I jog or walk about.

thirtyfoot

dna_leri wrote: »

I have tried doing both the recover to ~120 bpm (takes about 1.5 mins if I just stop/rest after a 3 min half mile) and the jog for same duration as interval (3 mins after half mile, HR is at about 150 bpm. Not sure which way is the best to achieve result?
I also find with the recover to 120 bpm, there is opportunity to vary the time, depending on whether I jog or walk about.

Without any scientific backup I'd do the recover to 120bpm by standing around. Then you could record what your recoveries are, ie, it was taking 90 secs and now its only 80 secs. Will be a good sign of progress as well of course if your half-mile splits are getting faster. You will find that recovering to 120 will take less time as you get fitter. You could use 120bpm as your benchmark for knowing when you are reading for your next interval no matter what the distance. Over time you will get a feeling for what recoveries are needed for efforts over certain distances and you won't need the hrm. This is just one method, many others work too.

Racing Flat

I've read that you're supposed to keep moving during the recovery, even a very slow jog. Not sure if this is to stop the heart rate dropping too low or is it to stop blood pooling distally - will try to find out.

OP - certainly difficult to get a clear answer for this probably because
a) maybe nobody knows for sure
b) there are so many variables
c) maybe it's different for everyone.

I think it was Peter Coe who wrote that the recovery time should be the minimum time needed to allow you to complete the number of repetitions in the desired time.

This will then depend on the relation of your training pace to your desired race pace. The faster your training pace in relation to your race pace, the more recovery time will be needed and vice-versa.

As the others said above, most important thing is what are you training for? So you say 5 and 10k.

So, what is your goal race pace? I think a main focus of your training should be at this pace. Say e.g. you want 18.30 for 5k that's about 6minute mile pace or 90secs / 400m.

12 x 400 at race pace, would probably be quite an easy session, so you might not need too much recovery, maybe a minute? Trial and error would determine this. Go out at 90 sces and take a set recovery and see if you can complete all 12 in 90secs off that recovery, if not, you need more recovery, if it is too easy, cut it down. Then every time you do it, if you keep the speed the same (race pace) you'll hopefully find that you need less and less recovery, so that eventually you will have quite a short recovery, so you are almost mimicing race conditions, but not quite. But I find that most people in the above category try to do the 400s in 80secs , so they overtrain...

You may also want to run at faster than race pace, but this does not need to be overdone. If doing this increase recovery time (same as time of interval is good) and maybe drop the number of repetitions.

You could similarly do 6 x 800, 5 x 1k, or 3 x 1mile, at race pace, but as these would take longer, longer recoveries, maybe the same time as the interval (except for the mile, 4mins probably enough). With 5 and 10k at club runner level, speed endurance rather than speed is probably the limiting factor, so I would (nowadays) lean towards more repetitions, slower (race pace or only very slightly faster ideally) with as much recovery as I need, but gradually cutting down on this. Before I used to bang out about 8 - 10 400s very hard, way way fatser than my 1 mile pace not to mention my 5k pace, so struggled to improve. But now that I have switched the focus to speed endurance, I am improving again.

I had a fitness test a while back and the physiologist gave me a plan to run a 10mile pb. His advice was to do long intervals, hard, but with as much recovery as time spent on the repetition. So typically 8 x 1k in about 3.30 with 3.30 recovery. But as the goal race was a 10mile, most of the training was done at thsi pace, so there were 3 tempo runs a week.

So I would say, train at race pace. You could vary your sessions between 5k race pace and 10k race pace. At this pace, recoveries may not need to be that long. Do the odd speed session, where you may be going faster than race pace, when doing this, take the same time on recovery as you ran. And I would edge towards the longer intervals, 800s and 1k.
Good luck.

shels4ever

Good post racing flat , will be very helpfull for me too.

hunnymonster

Racing Flat wrote: »

I think it was Peter Coe who wrote that the recovery time should be the minimum time needed to allow you to complete the number of repetitions in the desired time.

I run quite long distances and this is pretty much the route I follow.