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There is a comforting regularity about what is commonly called ‘interval training’. You run for a set distance - or maybe a set time - you rest, then you go again until the planned number of repetitions has been achieved. The rest may involve you gliding to a halt, flicking your heels up a few times and moving into an easy jog until rest time is over, or it may involve you hurling your heaving corpse onto the floor and crying out to the gods for mercy. It all depends on how hard you go and how many reps you grind out.

Recovery betwen hard efforts can be ‘passive’ - you stand still, hands on knees, gasping, slowly regain the vertical, gasp a bit more, look at your watch and moan because you have only 15 seconds before you have to go again.

Or recovery can be ‘active’ - you keep moving gently, jogging easily, until recovery time is over.

Or you can ‘float’. Which will add a dimension to your interval training and speed to your performances.

Active recovery can be advantageous in that it improves your capacity to process lactates at high levels of intensity. So maybe manipulating the intensity of the active recovery is an effective way of improving this aspect of your fitness, rather than manipulating the intensity of the main effort. In other words, having a ‘float’ recovery interval may enhance this aspect of your fitness better than trying to run faster during the work bout.

How does this work in practice? First of all, the intensity of the work bout shouldn’t be so high that an active recovery isn’t possible. So we’re talking about effort levels that correspond to ‘threshold’ - RPE 17, or whatever that is on your HRM. Second, the distance of the work bout can be shortened to accommodate the ‘float’ portion. So instead of running 800m repetitions, try 400m or 500m at ‘threshold’, with 400m or 300m of ‘float’ recovery.

Now comes the ‘float’: as you come to the end of your 400m, say, instead of coming to a halt, pausing, then moving into your typical very gentle recovery jog, you just keep going, but gear down to an easier pace, that, relative to what you have just run, might be 1/2 marathon pace, say, or even a tad above. Then after your allotted recovery - distance, or time - is over, you gear back up to goal training effort again. In effect, it is a continuous run at two speeds, a moderately fast speed and a steady, fairly comfortable aerobic speed.

While this goes against the criticism often levelled against non-elite runners of doing slow training too fast and fast training too slow - which is often the case - this type of training has a definite goal, that of improving your ‘lactate shuttle’, and is a very powerful tool to have in your training bag. And it is by no means an easy session, if you maintain a fairly rigid structure to it, as outlined below.

A session that works well if you are new to the concept is to run repetitions of 200m, with 200m ‘float’. If you felt that your threshold pace for 400m was 100 seconds, then run 200m in 50 seconds, and ‘float’ through the recovery 200m in about 60-70 seconds. It may seem ridiculously easy to begin with, but after a few reps you’ll be feeling it. Keeping to the times is key, and getting into a rhythm of the two paces is a part of that. It’s not a session that you can nail first time - pacing it right, getting the rhythm right, require a few goes - but it well worth the time investment.

Happy floating!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Advice, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.