After knee surgery and a miserable five months off earlier this year, I was looking desperately for a way to speed along my fitness. Intrigued and inspired by a video of a post-baby/pre-Boston Marathon Kara Goucher running track intervals immediately following a 5,000m track race, I decided to give the same thing a try (albeit at my own greatly reduced level).
Attempting to replicate this kind of effort, fellow Olympic marathon trials qualifier Sheri Piers and I ran a local 5K together at a fairly hard pace, and then jogged directly to a track about 200 meters from the finish line. We ran 5 x 800m and were stunned at how we felt. Expecting to feel fatigued and to struggle with the intervals, we instead knocked out repeats in times that would have been out of reach during a regular Tuesday morning workout. Stranger still, we experienced an odd sense of power and strength. It was as if we had been jolted with temporary super powers. What had happened? For an explanation, I contacted Steve Magness, Alberto Salazar's assistant coach and scientific advisor for the Nike Oregon Project.
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It's not uncommon for Oregon Project athletes like Goucher to complete intervals following a race. Magness believes this is beneficial because immediately following a race your body is in a different state than usual and functions somewhat like a sponge that's better able to absorb training and make adaptations. Says Magness, "After races you have a hormonal profile that you just don't get in practice. It creates an environment that allows for almost a super-compensation effect, where we can get more bang for our buck and higher volume/intensities of work than we normally would be able to get in. In essence, it creates a favorable situation for adaptation that you normally don't get. So we try and take advantage of it." In other words, the idea is to strike while the iron is hot by adding additional repeats and increasing the benefits gained during the session.
As to why it might feel surprisingly good, Magness says, "You have a slew of hormones in the system you normally don't have during a workout. In addition, your nervous system is primed to a higher degree. These and a few other factors like endorphin release allow most people to have surprisingly good workouts after races."
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The best time to follow a race with track intervals is at the beginning of a racing season while your fitness is developing. Magness also recommends that workouts should be done only after races that are 5K or shorter. He explains, "Once you get up to racing 10K or half marathon or any of the longer races, the volume is already high. In those cases, if it was just a tune-up race and extra work would be done, a long cool-down to turn the race into a long-run-like effort would be a good option."
Regarding frequency, it depends upon how rigorous your racing schedule is; allowing adequate recovery after a race-plus-workout day is essential. "Professional athletes can allow more time to bounce back and recover from a race-plus-workout combination, while a younger athlete might have to recover for another race in a few days," says Magness.
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Regarding the type of workout to perform after a race, Magness says, "The workout prescribed depends on the athlete's overall training. You generally give what an athlete needs or has not been getting recently in practice. So, if you've been doing a lot of shorter interval workouts and then race a 3K or a 5K, a 4-mile tempo might be needed. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if the goal is to work on speed endurance, you might run 10 x 200m at faster than race pace after running a 1500."
Magness continues, "The overall workout depends on what the goal of the session is. Look at the race as the first part of the workout and the actual workout as the second portion. Take into account what you have done in training recently and what the race gives you and then work from there." For example, missing speed? Follow a 5K with 8 x 200m. Lacking tempo runs? Follow a 5K with a 20-minute tempo run. Neglecting 5K-paced speed work? Bolster the benefits of a 5K with 4 x 800m at the pace you averaged in the 5K. Of course, most road races don't end right near a track, but you can replicate the above workouts by running for time. In either case, after you finish your race, collect yourself, have something to drink, change clothes if needed, jog just a bit and then get right into the workout while your hormone levels remain high.
Finally, Magness warns against approaching a race differently merely because you know that you have intervals to complete afterward. "A race is a race, so you do not want to go into it thinking you're going to give some sub-par effort," he says.
"In general, you run the race and then the workout is thought of almost as a separate entity. You don't want to get into the habit of saving something in the races because you know you have a workout after."
