I’ve been reading more about good athletes (short course and endurance) incorporating very short intervals into their workouts. For runners 100m. For cyclist 30s. The reasoning is that less lactate will build up in short intervals vs. longer ones. Makes sense. I know this is nothing new but it seems that I’ve just been reading more of it…
My intervals have always been longer for both sports. My short intervals are around 800m and 2 min, respectively.
I plan to do some testing but has anyone compared their ability to do more speed work per session by shortening the intervals. For example, is the primary advantage that you can do 20 x 100m vs. 8x200m?
Short duration efforts allow you to perform better at short duration efforts. You may see some improvement in longer duration efforts.
800m/2min seems a bit long to work on anaerobic work capacity, and maybe too short to rack up enough time for V02 max training… what exactly are you trying to accomplish?
The reason people are doing this is so they are trainng there areobic system at a much faster pace then they could if they did mile repeats. Greg Bennet said that he would do quarter mile repeats at 4:48 pace but it helped train his aerobic system.
For running you should do the entire range of intervals. The shortest ones we do in practice are 200 meters but I personally like to do very short 50 sprints up hills from time to time on my own.
There was a form of training for runners consisting of nothing but very short intervals – LOTS of very short interval - popularized by Mihaly Igloi. He coached Bob Schul to the Olympic Gold Medal in 5000 meters years ago. I’ve just found that it’s best not to concentrate on any one intensity but rather do them all, from 100 meter reps to 2 mile reps. You really need multi-pace training. This is merely personal opinion from personal experience.