3 x 6 x (500m/200m)
3 x 6 x (500m/200m)
Designed for XC runners
Intensity
500m @ 5K pace
200m STEADY Running (roughly 15K - 13.1 pace range)
Recovery
4’ - 6’ between sets
Exertion
8/10
Periodization
Specific Period
Context & Details
Lactate.
Those who understand it can enjoy incredible running success. And those who don’t are left forever thinking running sucks because it’s hard.
Throughout history, the best coaches and training programs integrate workouts designed to improve the capability of runners to buffer, clear, tolerate, and utilize lactate.
Lydiard, Bowerman, Coe got it. Vin Lannana and Mike Smith get it. And their runners have enjoyed success partly due to training which improved their body’s relationship with Lactate.
Lactate can be a friend or foe to a runner. And training runners to have a more virtuous relationship with Lactate is sophisticated, but yields very high returns on performance.
No coach has understood this concept, and so successfully applied it, then Renato Canova.
If you want to get better results by learning more about Canova’s methods, Join the Running Scholar Program for only $29 to get unlimited access to 100+ training logs of his athletes.
Canova figured out that a runner’s ability to process and use Lactate as a fueling substrate for muscle action is best trained by exposures to high concentrations of Lactate. This runs counter to the traditional approach of the controlled tempo, which calls for a progressive cascading exposure from low to moderate levels of lactate, by running a manageable, even pace for a sustained period of time.
Canova’s approach is to run fast, around target race speed, or quicker, punctuated with segments of less intense, but steady running.
In training, improvements in fitness are measured not by a quicking of race pace, but either by an extension of time the runner can produce target race pace before a reprieve is needed, or a quickening of the steady running period which separates the race pace bouts.
It’s brilliant. And it works — really well.
Think of today’s workout as 3 sets of 4,200m of continuous running, alternating between 500m at target 5K pace, and 200m Steady at roughly 15K - 13.1 pace.
This session as written is placed in the Specific Period of the season when runners are nearing peak condition heading into their Performance Period. As Canova says, the aim of workouts in the Specific Period is to “learn the pace” of the runner’s race.
“Learning the pace” requires teaching both the mind and body how to keep race tempo while in a fatiguing state.
What runners experience is a sharp injection of Lactate into their system on the first 500m rep, then a brief opportunity to clear and buffer some of it as the pace slackens on the 200m segment. However, with every 500m segment, the body is met with a sharper elevation of Lactate and a rapidly growing demand to clear heightening levels of lactate.
Translation: It gets harder and harder to keep pace as the legs grow heavy and the mind gets cloudy from fatigue — just like an XC race.
Which makes this a highly effective and transferable race pace practice session.
For less fit or experienced runners, you can manipulate the periods of 5K running and Steady running as needed, as well as the duration of a set. I’ve found most adequately trained High School XC runners get a lot of benefit from, and can successfully complete, sets of 400m/200m alternations. Two to four sets of 1,800m - 2,400m seem to work well.
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3 Good Books on XC / Lactate training
The Science of Running by Steve Magness
Running: Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology in Practice by Frans Bosch and R. Klomp
The Physiology of Training for High Performance by Duncan Macdougall & Digby Sale