Workout: The Tempo Run

Gym / Home Workout

Workout:
Today is an active recovery day, however this is meant to push your lactate threshold, and will be a bit more uncomfortable than the typical active recovery.

For Today: perform a Tempo Run (pace during tempo around 85-90% max heart-rate / a hair slower than your 10K race pace if you know it). A good indicator that you are going fast enough (but not too fast, if that was ever really a problem) is that you should be able to speak in short sentences here and there, but a full conversation is not possible.

The Workout:
– Start with an 8 minute easy pace run
– Next, perform 3 tempo runs each for 5 minutes at tempo pace, including a 3 minute recovery in between (taking a total of 24 minutes).
– Finally, cool down with an 8 minute easy pace run

Why?
We do this workout to push up the lactate threshold (the point at which the body switches from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism). Effectively, this will allow you to perform all kinds of workouts for longer duration, (the body will fatigue quickly as soon as it is forced into an anaerobic metabolism). The higher your threshold, the longer you can sustain a given pace and build strength, speed, and endurance.

Either following the activity above, or later in the day, complete a 15-20 minute stretching session, holding each stretch for 60 seconds.