Choosing Workouts For Your Five-Pace Training Program

Reading time: 7 min

In the post on Five-Pace Training, you learned how to construct a program based on your goal race distance. In sum, over a two-week or three-week cycle, you complete 5 (or 6) workouts, two at paces slower than race pace, two at faster than race pace and one at race pace. All other runs in the program are Base runs of different distances to achieve your target mileage. But what about choosing workouts to include in the program?

The post did not outline how to determine which workouts to include and at what intensity level the training should be. I’m going to tackle choosing workouts in this post. Workout selection is both an art and a science and deserves your attention.

Choosing Workouts as a Science

When you hear “science” in the context of running, terms like VO2Max, lactate threshold, ventilatory threshold, aerobic, anaerobic and others may come to mind. However, you are not going to find those terms here.

The structure of the Five-Pace Training program handles all these physiological elements in more-or-less the ratio your event requires. Your five paces support both your speed and your endurance while providing practice at race pace. In other workouts, train at the correct speeds and the underlying physiology takes care of itself.

So, when I say “choosing workouts as a science” I mean that you should approach each workout as a systematic experiment using the scientific process

Predict in advance how you think the workout will go. People often skip this step. But without the initial prediction, you won’t develop your ability to foresee the difficulty of workouts accurately. Guess what will be most comfortable and most challenging about the training. Anticipate your splits, pacing and rate of perceived exertion.
Conduct the workout.
Observe what happens. Take detailed notes immediately post-workout. Include both qualitative (your feel and effort) and quantitative (your splits and pacing) information.
Compare the results to your prediction to close the feedback loop. This step is what develops your training intuition – essential for the “art” portion of choosing workouts correctly.

Choosing Workouts as an Art

The art portion of choosing workouts refers to knowing when to progress which workouts in your program. Or when to switch from one workout type to another to improve a weakness or solidify a strength. For each of the different paces, I have detailed different workout types that challenge your body and mind in different ways. For example, I split the 1500m/Mile-pace workouts in Short Recovery and Long Recovery, and the 5km-pace workouts into Work-Rest, Over-Unders and Progression Runs. Lookup the workout of other coaches too and you’ll even more workout types.

The good news is that you can “fake” the art portion at first by including enough variety in your training. The five different paces offer a good amount of diversity. Plus bouncing around between the different workout types for each pace increases the variation even more. You’ll discover where you thrive and struggle, plus what you like and dislike – which may come as a surprise. All this experience will make choosing workouts easier with time.

The bad news is you can’t “fake” the science portion – you need to predict, execute and review every workout. And it is this process that develops the training intuition – which makes you better at choosing workouts in the future. But honestly, this isn’t bad news at all. Reflecting on your training makes it more enjoyable, not less.

Five-Pace Workout Lists

Below is a list of the different Paces and associated workouts that may be part of your Five-Pace Training Program. Compiling at the workout lists is still a work in progress – forgive me for the ones that are not ready yet.

Starting at the Right Level

When you click on any of the workout list links above, you’ll see a series of workouts. You can think of the position of the workout in the list as the workout “level”. The first workout is level 1. Second workout level 2, etc. At which level should you start?

If you’re newer to structured running, start at the beginning of the progression. There is a lot to learn about pacing and how to run consistent reps again and again. Make this your primary focus. The first few workouts for each pace are perfect for this.

If you have more running experience, go ahead and start somewhere in the middle of the progression. If you end up inconsistent with your pacing in the first few workouts, move to an earlier workout in the sequence so you can practice your pacing skills.

Moving to the Next Level

There are two aspects you must consider:

Your qualitative and quantitative assessment of your workout performance. Things like your running technique, splits, pacing, ability to respect Rule #1, among other things.
How workouts at that specific pace fit into your overall Five-Pace Training program. Quick example, your target race pace is 5km. One week your schedule calls for a 1500m-pace workout on Monday and 5km-pace workout on Thursday. You complete both trainings successfully. Should you progress both, only one, or none. And if only one, which one?

Assessment of Workout Performance

First, let’s go over your qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Judging your performance is relatively easy if you use the scientific process described above. Review your notes to answer the following questions:

Did your performance match or exceed your predictions?
Was your run technique and pacing high throughout the training?
During the toughest moment of the workout, typically the second-to-last or last rep, were you confident you could handle more volume?
How many days did it take you to recover from the workout?

These questions require you to use information from before, during and after the workout to come to a decision.

Perhaps your answers to questions 1-3 were positive. But it took two days for you to feel recovered when you want it to take only one day based on your overall training schedule. You’re better not to progress just yet.

Or maybe questions 1, 2 and 4 were all positive, but in the heat of the moment, you had an unusually high amount of mental resistance. You’re glad to have overcome the resistance during the workout. But you can’t honestly say it was “comfortable”. Later in the day when you remember the workout as being “not so bad”, stick to your mid-workout judgment. Repeat the workout before moving to the next level.

Workouts within your Overall Program

Now let’s imagine the situation I posed earlier. You complete two workouts in the same week. And your answers to questions 1-4 are positive for both workouts. Should you progress both, only one, or none?

The answer is it depends.

Typically you’ll want to have only one “moving part” in your weekly training. What’s a moving part?

The workout level for each pace in your program
Your total weekly mileage – the total distance of all runs combined
Your workout density – the number of workouts per week

Since Five-Pace Training schedules operate on two-week or three-week cycles, you have two or three moving parts per cycle.

So, to answer the question of both, only one or none?

If you are in the process of increasing weekly mileage, then the next time these runs appear on your schedule you will be running the workout with more fatigue. In this case, progress neither workout. The extra accumulated fatigue will increase the training stimulus.

Similarly, if you plan on increasing workout density from two to three workouts per week progress neither workout. Again, accumulated fatigue will enhance the training effect.

If you’re the type that does not like to do the same workout twice, but you are not ready to progress just yet, no problem. Stick to the same workout level for a particular pace and change the workout type.

If your mileage and workout density will remain about the same, then go ahead and progress one of the workouts. Why only one? Because they fall on the same week and you only want to have one “moving part” per week. Choose which one workout to progress based on how close you are to your target race.

The closer to your target race, the more you will want to progress the Race Pace workout. This funnels your training toward more specificity when it counts.
The further away from your target race, the more you will want to the progress your Support workouts. This allows more time to develop general speed and endurance before getting more specific.

Exceptions

There are exceptions though. If you are an experienced runner coming off a Base Building and Transition program, you can simultaneously progress the workout level of all your paces for a few weeks. Once you reach the middle of the progression for all your speeds, then you’ll need to use more discretion when increasing the level.

Up-and-Down Method of Choosing Workouts

Another highly effective method is to move up a level for some paces and down a level for other paces each training cycle. For example, let’s say your Five-Paces are 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m and 5km, and you are at Level 3 for all paces. In one training cycle, you may decide to progress your 800m and 3000m runs to Level 4 while moving down to Level 2 for your 400m, 1500m and 5km run. Then the following cycle, do the opposite.

This falls under the “fake the art portion by including enough variety in your training” concept mentioned earlier. Moving up and down levels adds more variety allowing you to fine-tune your training intuition. Use the Up-and-Down method for two or three training cycles. You’ll feel which workouts you can progress and which workouts should remain at the same level. And your training intuition will strengthen.

Mark Tosques

Endurance Sports Coach