Threshold Training

Threshold Pace Workouts

Reading time: 5 min

The term Threshold comes from the world of exercise physiology. If you run at a pace above your Threshold Pace, your blood lactate levels and breathing rate increase at a much faster rate compared to a speed only slightly slower. And these increases correlate with a much more rapid onset of fatigue. The physiology terms are Lactate Threshold & Lactate Turnpoint and Ventilatory Threshold if you want to google it.

Running at your Threshold provides a significant training stimulus for your endurance development. While, at the same time, minimizing the mechanical stress on your body because you don’t need to run as fast as 5k-pace or Mile-pace to get the intended training effect.

Plus, you can hold threshold pace (or just below) for a long time to stretch your stamina. You practice becoming comfortable, even to crave, the discomforts of running for extended durations – a crucial characteristic of the success of any distance runner.

In this post, I present two types of Threshold workouts: Tempo Runs and Cruise Intervals.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these Threshold pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

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Coach Vigil’s Fulcrum

Reading time: 7 min

It has become clear to me that we must view a training program as a balance with the aerobic phase, the Fulcrum, and the anaerobic phase

Coach Joe Vigil

Coach Joe Vigil is a living legend. He is a scientist and coach whose unique combination of physiology and sports science with motivation and decades of experience have produced incredible results.

Here is a shortlist of his coaching accomplishments:

  • Coach of Meb Keflezighi, Deena Kastor and Brenda Martinez to name a few famous American runners.
  • 20 different medalists at the World Cross Country Championships
  • 19 NCAA and NAIA collegiate team championships
  • A perfect score at the NCAA Cross Country National Championships which means that the runners on his team finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
  • A meet-winning percentage of 94.2 percent with over 3000 wins
  • Coach of the US Olympic Team, twice. And was named to the coaching staff of the World Cross Country Championships, the Pan American Games, and numerous other international coaching staffs

If you’d like to learn more about Coach Vigil, Spartan Life did an excellent profile on him which you can read HERE. If you’ve never heard the name Joe Vigil before today, make sure you read the profile!

The focus in this post is how Coach Vigil transitions his runners between the aerobic and anaerobic phases of a training program. In earlier posts, we learned about the methods used by Arthur Lydiard and Jack Daniels. Coach Vigil calls this phase the Fulcrum, and he describes the concept in his book Road to the Top.

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Jack Daniels’ Phase II

Reading time: 8 min

Sometimes picking up the pace in a race feels better than staying with the same pace; always try speeding up before you drop back from a tough pace

Coach Jack Daniels

In the mid-90s, editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine Amby Burfoot called coach Jack Daniels the “world’s best running coach.” Burfoot, an accomplished marathoner from the late-60s and early-70s, believed so strongly that he “plastered” the phrase on the cover of the magazine.

In 2009, Burfoot posted on the Runner World blog a point-by-point account of why he believes so strongly in Daniels‘ coaching abilities. If you are not familiar with Daniels, take a moment to read the post.

As I mentioned in the post on Fast but Not Hard drills, Daniels’ Running Formula was the first full-length running book I read when I first started. I implemented his program for several seasons. And I enjoyed it tremendously.

The way Daniels lays out the principles of training and simplifies the concepts down to specific pace ranges and workouts is impressive. If you’re interested in learning more about the nuts-and-bolts of running, Daniels’ Running Formula is a great place to start.

What we are going to focus on today is Phase II of Daniels training programs.

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