Warm up 15 minutes, dynamic stretching and drills. 3 X 600 meters @ 10K goal pace with 2 minute easy jog between. 2 X 200 meters at a slightly quicker pace. Cool down 15 minutes.
What does this mean?? I get lost with "3x600meters....." what does this mean .. non runner terms
it means run 600 meters at 10K goal pace, then 2 minutes of easy jogging immediately following the sprint. Do that 3 times. Then rest a few seconds. Then you do 200 meters at faster than 10K goal pace, followed by 30-60 seconds of easy jogging recovery. do that twice. then you do a 15-minute cooldown jog, starting at the faster end of easy and gradually tapering down to a very slow easy.
I agree this stuff can be confusing... I remember struggling over this when I first started, and then I asked for help people were like... "duh, isn't it obvious?" and I was like "uh... NO! that's why I asked!".
So, here's what it means...
First off... this is a description of an "interval workout"... which means that it's got you doing some hard effort work mixed in with some "recovery" time. The idea of this workout is that you're going to push yourself hard for shorter-ish periods of time, and then give yourself a little mini-break, and then push yourself hard again. It gives you a chance to work harder than you normally can for a long period time. And results in your pushing the "ceiling" of what your body can handle.
So... the specifics...
1) "Warm up 15 minutes - dynamic stretching and drills" - This basically is saying, don't just start doing your workout right away... you want to give your body some time to "get warmed up"... and since this is an interval workout, your going to be working hard, and so you need to really make sure you ease into it. Everyone has a different idea of what a warm up is, so do what you feel comfortable with. I personally like to do a very easy jog... maybe about a mile. By dynamic stretching and drills they are referring to ideas like doing "lunges" or "butt kicks" or "skipping" which are a form of stretching that you do while moving. I wrote a blog post about it here... http://brad.sweat365.com/2007/01/15/dynamic-warm-up-pre-running-exercises/
2) "3 X 600 meters @ 10K goal pace with 2 minute easy jog between." - This is the start of your real workout... What it means is: Go run for 600 meters "pretty fast", then do an easy jog for 2 minutes, then repeat two more times: run "pretty fast" for 600 meters, jog for 2 minutes, run "pretty fast" for 600 meters, jog for 2 minutes. You can see that this is easier to do if you've got access to a "track", say at a local high school or college campus. Most tracks are 400 meters around. Sometimes they are in yards (440 yards per lap) which is "close enough". So this means "run one and a half laps".
If you don't have access to a track, these kinds of workouts can be very hard to do... but you can still do them, you'll just need to figure out what distance to run. If you have a running computer, it will certainly help you with the distance.
How fast is "10K goal pace"? Well, that's for you to decide. I'm describing it as "pretty fast". The idea is that you are trying to "push yourself". These workouts are designed to help you learn to run faster. You should be pretty tired after running those three laps. Similar workouts might have said something like "@ LT" which would mean "at Lactate Threshold" which would be even faster... and you'd want to run fast enough that you really feel like you couldn't continue.
The point of the "easy 2 min jog between" is to give you a chance to "recover" so that you can go run another 1.5 laps. On a track, this could work nicely as "jog/walk" around the second half of the second lap... and take about 2 mins to get there. This would get you back to the start line for your next interval.
Don't rest too much... but rest enough to let your breathing relax and your heart rate come down from the max.
3) "2 X 200 meters at a slightly quicker pace" -- Ok, this is the same as above... except this time, you're only going to run 200 meters (half a lap) and you're going to run "even faster". After you run the first half lap, then do another light jog... it doesn't say for sure but I'd do another 2 min. Then do it again.
4) "Cool down 15 minutes." -- Now you're almost done... but you can't just stop and collapse in the middle of the field... you need to jog for another 15 minutes or so and cool down. I might jog a lap then walk a lap.
Thanks for asking... this is actually a really interesting topic that we should write a full blown article about.
Good luck!
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