Competitor - June 2017

46 TRAINING

workout of the month

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LEG SPEED, PLEASE

By Michael Jacques

Excerpted with permission

from One hour Workouts:

50 swim, Bike & Run

Workouts for Busy

athletes by Scott Molina,

Mark Newton and Michael

Jacques (VeloPress, 2010).

Scale effort race Pace

RPE 1 Easy Slower than normal training pace

RPE 2 Moderate Normal training pace

RPE 3 Moderately Hard Marathon pace

RPE 4 Hard 10K race pace

RPE 5 Very Hard 5K race pace and faster

Rate of PeRceived exeRtion Scale

No sport benefits from leg speed like running

does. Regular leg speedwork not only improves

your basic speed but also actively stretches mus-

cles and tendons in a specific manner, which

means in the long term you’re much less likely

to sustain running injuries. But it gets better: Leg

speedwork can also improve your basic ability!

Think about it: If you can improve your

stride length by 2 centimeters (approximately

16 meters per mile) and your cadence by two

strides per minute (approximately 23 meters

per mile), a runner with a 10K personal best of

40 minutes could improve by close to a minute.

That can be achieved not by training harder, but

simply by implementing leg speedwork.

If this sounds like you—and why wouldn’t it?—

then use this workout to pick up more leg speed.

time/

diStance deScRiPtion

10 min. Easy running RPE 1

6–10 ×

20–30 sec.

Sprints at 90% effort RPE 4–5

Run easy for 5 min. between reps

10 min. Easy running RPE 1

These sprints can be 20–30 seconds across

a park, or they can be 100–200 m on a running

track. They are fast, but not 100 percent, about

the pace you would race 400 m. But this is not

an effort session; it’s a technique session. You

will huff and puff a bit at the end of each sprint,

but the 5 minutes of easy running between reps

should help you to recover fully so you can get

through the session without undue effort. This is

crucial because any fatigue will undermine your

ability to run fast with good technique. To pro-

mote speed without undue effort, this workout is

best done with a tailwind or on a slight downhill.

It’s the kind of workout you can do year-round

because as well as building leg speed and helping

avoid injury, it’s a great final speed workout in

the five days before a race and for maintaining

speed between races.

How FASt IS too FASt?

There is a fine line between a leg speed workout and an anaerobic workout. To avoid a

crossover you need to do this workout just under maximum sprint speed and with 5 minutes

between each sprint. ideally the pace is around the speed you would race a 400m sprint. You

could establish this pace by doing a 400m time trial or use the following table to estimate leg-

speed pace per 100m based on your 5k personal best.

5K PB 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00

Leg-speed

pace/100m 15–17 sec. 16–18 sec. 17–19 sec. 18–20 sec. 19–21 sec.

5K PB 22:00 23:00 24:00 25:00

Leg-speed

pace/100m 20–22 sec. 21–23 sec. 22–24 sec. 23–25 sec.

PacinG GUide

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