Tempo V Intervals

kennyb3

Have often thought about which is more beneficial to race times. obviously it depends on the race length - and clearly tempos are more useful for half marathons upwards. but in the P&D books it seems to suggest 8k's and 10k's are more lactate threshold based than VO2 based and hence tempo's should be preferred sligthly - i ve always wondered about this though.

anyway I was reading this earlier and it got me thinking http://www.pacificstriders.org/data/RRN022707.html

Now im sure there are plenty of better read/more knowledgeable individuals on this site that can point to other articles etc so id be grateful if you would share your thoughts on the pluses and minuses of tempo's and intervals, what paces you use, what lenghts you do and how you structure them around a 5k or 10k race program. i.e mix them up or start out doing 400s and build to miles and 2k's and when you do the last set prior to a race.

im sure alot of people would benefit from knowing when and what to do exactly

BJohnson

Thanks for linking that article - very interesting to read. I've been doing both interval and tempo training for the past few months. It'd be great to hear other people's thoughts or see other research that has been done comparing the two types of workout.