Here’s where things start to get fun. In the grand scheme of things, your running journey is not about the destination, it’s about the stops you make along the way. Rather, in our case, it’s not about the racing results, it’s about the training that got you there. Racing is a lot of fun and exhilarating, but it’s the training that got you to that point and we need to show it love just as much as the rest of being a runner. This article is all about terminology used in running workouts as well as a few well known types of workouts.
Do note, several terms may cross over from other articles. Those articles give an overall definition, here it’s broken down in real world application in training.
First off we’ll start off with a few different categories of workouts.
Long/Easy Run: These are runs where you are building up a base of what you can do and expanding the capacity of which your body can process oxygen (aerobic capacity). You slowly increase the amount of mileage you do to allow your body to acclimate to the distance you are looking to accomplish. A general rule of thumb mentioned is that you should increase your accumulated weekly mileage no more than 10% so as to avoid developing injuries and overtraining.
Hill Work: This is not usually a fan favorite, but it’s just what it sounds like. Depending on the environment you live in, you’re seeking out hills and running hard efforts on them. This helps to stay strong when running hills as everyone knows they are hard. This can be done many ways. Going on routes and running different hills, finding one hill and running timed intervals, the opportunities are endless.
Intervals: A set distance or time you are running a given effort/pace for. In a workout, can be done repeatedly or generally mixed distances/times
Repeats: Doing a certain interval, be it time or distance, repeatedly with the intention of being consistent/neg splitting. This allows the body to be able to produce those same efforts in a race
Pyramid: A type of workout where you do an easier effort to start with either by effort or distance, that leads to a harder effort and then doing that again in reverse. This can be done many different ways. This type of workout can be done through time or distance intervals. An example is 200, 400, 800, 1000 and back down again. You can do repeated intervals with different effort levels. The goal is a steady increase and decrease of effort, interval, pace, etc.
Fartlek: It has nothing to do with flatulence so we can clear the air on that. This term is Swedish for “speed-play.” This is a continuous run with no standing rests that incorporates periods of fast and slow running. This term has evolved numerous times and from it, many different workouts have been developed. Some say it can be any run that has varying speeds, others say that the speed intervals have to be random, others say there needs to be variation between the length and duration. The vagueness of the definition really leads to the world being your oyster.
Tempo/Threshold: Tempo and Threshold are terms used as both a type of effort and a type of workout, threshold specifically is also a type of test. This article explains how to use it in a workout as well as a description of the effort. Another article explains the tests a little more. These terms are kind of used interchangeably. It is a workout that surrounds an effort/pace that you could sustain for an hour in almost perfect racing conditions. This type of workout will feel relatively easy at first, but the longer you go on, the more discomfort you start to feel as you’re getting tired and building up something called lactate (more on this in another article). Much like how a general threshold is the point where you cross from one territory to another, typically outside to inside, you are crossing the threshold, going from running at a long term sustainable effort that feels easy to now reaching efforts that are not easily sustainable. It’s harder to maintain, and takes more effort the longer you try to maintain it.
That is a pretty good sum up of the different types of workouts you can do. Now we’ll move on to a few specific workouts you may hear about a lot.
Yassoos: A workout used in tangent of predicting a marathon time. You run 10×800, with rest for the same amount of time you do an 800. If you run a 3:00 800, you rest for 3:00. If your average time for the workout was 3:30, your estimated marathon time would be 3:30. Now pay attention, goal pace =/= workout pace for Yassoos, it’s very easy to get mixed up. If you are going for say a 4:00 marathon, you are doing 4:00 800’s. A 4 hour marathon would be about 9:09 per mile, whereas a 4 min 800 is an 8 min mile. So be mindful of that if you want to attempt it.
Straights and Curves: This workout has a lot of nicknames. It’s also commonly known as In-and-Outs and Straight-A-Ways, there are very likely to be others as well. This could be considered a type of fartlek on a track, as you are running continuously and mixing in fast and slow efforts. In this workout you run the straights at a hard effort and then walk/jog the curves for rest.
That is absolutely not all folks. The joys of workouts is you can get really creative in how you go about creating a regimen. The possibilities truly are endless.