Workout of the Day: AM - 4 x 1 Mile, PM - 2 x (5 x 300m)
AM: 4 x 1 Mile, PM: 2 x (5 x 300m)
Intensity — 1 Mile repeats at 3K pace, 300s at 1500m pace
Recovery — 4 - 5 minutes after 1 Mile reps, 60” after 300m reps in a set, 5 - 8 minutes between sets
Exertion — 10/10
Context & Details
In 2006, 3,000m Steeplechase world record holder Saif Saaeed Shaheen (Stephen Cherono) did this workout in the following splits:
Morning: 4 x 1600m, 4:30 recovery
3:56, 3:59, 3:58, 3:58
Afternoon: 2 x (5 x 300m), 30” recovery between 300m reps, 2:30 recovery between sets
38.3 average for set #1
39.0, 37.3, 37.2, 37.2, 37.3, 37.0 for set #2
My mind exploded when I first saw this session. You might also be astonished reading these spilts.
Welcome to Renato Canova’s “Specific Block” workouts.
“Blocks” are days when the runner does 2 workouts: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. In Canova’s lexicon there are Special Blocks and Specific Block days.
Special Blocks are workouts that focus primarily on advancing one performance quality in a day like endurance or speed, but not race pace. They occur in the Special Period of his periodization scheme.
Specific Blocks incorporate a significant amount of work at race pace in the morning and usually followed up by an injection of speed in the afternoon session, unless you’re a marathoner. Then it is a large volume of marathon pace running both in the AM and PM.
The exertion is perhaps higher than a race, so it is fair to peg it at 10+/10.
Runners need to take care to be well-rested before a block day and must recover well afterwards. Usually 2-4 days of very easy regeneration follow block day workouts. Block days happen about once every 14 days or 28 days.
When Canova talks about workout or weekly “modulation” he is referring to a high degree of variation in distance and intensity in training, which introduces greater stressors with proportionally greater recovery required for adaptation to occur. Remember, hard workouts damage our bodies. The degree to which we benefit from any workout is determined by the depth and breadth of the recovery which follows it.
In the Specific period, a runner might run 20 miles total (including warm-up and cool-down running) on a block day, then over the next 3 days only log 8 miles split into two 4 miles easy jogging sessions. That’s 44 miles in 4 days. It’s going to be really hard to log a 100 mile week in this situation.
This is another reason why total weekly miles don’t matter as much as we think.
In the example above, the only miles that “mattered” (meaning they were stressful enough to create a stimulus) were the ones at race specific speeds. Those easy 8 mile days provide no stress or training stimulus, as the pace on them was laughably slow. The only purpose of those easy runs is to promote improved circulation by way of an enhanced oxidative recovery effect. And now that I think of it, this is actually a really good situational example of effective “Polarize Training” as popularized by researcher Stephen Seiler.
Block days are really effective in the Special and Specific period. There is a lot of Russian sports science research which clearly demonstrates high variation of load and intensity influencing big jumps in performance ability. The problem is most of this research is not translated from the Russian, or is found in dense texts like SUPERTRAINING by Verkhoshansky &. Siff. This book is almost 800 pages and a copy costs over $100. But it’s totally worth it.
Since the information is not easily accessible, few coaches and runners I know are aware of the potent training stimulus block day workouts can provide. Also, even fewer are willing to sacrifice their arbitrary weekly mileage goals.
But to both Canova and myself, the goal of training is to be fully prepared (without question) to race at a specific speed on race day, not have logged the most number of miles in training.