Falling back in love with the 1600’s
When I ran my first qualifying marathon I was 34 years old. I trained for 16 weeks in the summer of 1997. I dropped my finishing time from in the 3:50 range to 3:09 in 16 weeks that summer. The following spring I ran a 3:06:42 Boston marathon that still stands as my personal best at the distance.
What did I do in those 16 weeks to drop 45 minutes off my time? I did 1600’s. Lots and lots of 1600’s. I also ran 7 days a week and took my Sunday long runs up to two 26 milers, but what got me the speed was the speedwork – the 1600’s.
I was down at that track, actually many different tracks, twice a week for 16 weeks, without fail, putting in the work to burn in the pace I needed to meet my goal.
I liked the specificity of the work. I loved and hated the sameness of it, the simplicity of it and the effectiveness for my purpose.
This process was different than what you might read in a training plan or a how-to running book. I did not run 1600’s to find my pace and set my goals. I did it in reverse. I set my goals and then executed the 1600’s at the pace I needed to get there.
I’m coming back to this now because I find myself once again in need of burning in the pace I need to qualify. I also got asked a question about the effectiveness of 800’s today to which I responded that I thought 1600’s were much more appropriate when training for the marathon.
Let me explain my madness to you. You can take from it what you want.
First, the basics: A 1600 meter interval is the equivalent of a metric mile on your standard out of doors running track. It is 4 laps of that 400 meter oval. Each corner and each straight-away are 100 meters. 2 laps is an 800 meter interval. All of this is in the center-most lane starting and ending at the same spot on the track.
If you plan to act out my 1600 love affair you should be warned that it can be quite hard on your body. You need to warm up and stretch well. I usually jog at least a mile to warm up, then stretch, then do my intervals, then warm down with at least a mile jog.
In between the intervals I jog a lap, no matter what. I don’t want to train my body/mind to expect a collapse or a walk after a hard effort. No matter how spent I am I jog and recover a 400, then stop and stretch and take a drink to let my Hr come down.
It takes a few weeks for your body to catch up to this speedwork and you may want to ease into it with 200’s, 400’s, 800’s and 1200’s – working up to the distance until you can complete the 1600 with disciplined mechanics.
You might jump to the conclusion that I am doing speedwork primarily for conditioning, strength and fitness. I am not. These are happy outcomes of the speedwork but they are not the purpose.
I primarily use speedwork to “burn in” pace, mechanics and form discipline.
What I’m trying to accomplish when I do speedwork is:
- Pace discipline – I want to be able to maintain that exact pace for the entire interval. This teaches and burns in that pace so that I know in a race what my pace is without looking at my watch. I do this by memorizing or marking the 200’s and getting as close to each required split as possible throughout the 1600. This teaches pace, pace confidence and pace discipline.
- Mechanics and form – To run at that exact pace I need to find and burn in a very efficient form and mechanics for that exact pace. The mechanics should not break at all during the interval.
When you feel your pace flagging focus on reeling in your form and mechanics elements to get back on pace. Don’t just increase effort, focus on relaxing into the effort with pace and form. This teaches form, form confidence and form discipline.
- Managing discomfort and relaxing into it. What you will find with a 1600 is that the 3rd lap is the hardest. This is where it starts to hurt and you really have to transcend to get through. This is exactly what you need for a long race. This teaches the ability to recover mid-race at high effort and keep racing.
Like I said, my speedwork is not focused on getting faster or stronger (although those things will happen) it is about being able to maintain the race pace you need across the distance.
Why not run 800 meter repeats? It’s the same thing right? And Bart Yasso does them, right?
In my experience an 800M interval is not long enough to force the pace and form and discomfort discipline you need for a longer race. If you are in shape to run a marathon you should be able to gut out an 800 without much effort. What I’m saying is that you can ‘fake it’ for an 800, but you can’t fake it for a 1600.
That 3rd lap can be an uncomfortable and harrowing ordeal. You are still far away from the finish and your lungs and legs are protesting. In order to get through it you are going to be forced to relax into the effort and focus on your form and pace.
The 800 doesn’t have that harrowing 3rd lap and is short enough to ‘gut it out’ without the focus on pace and form.
Let’s talk about how to build a 1600 program that will get you to your goal marathon time.
There are two paces I like to burn in. I call them speed and tempo. I set speed at approximately 1 minute per mile faster than goal marathon pace. I set tempo at approximately 30 seconds per mile faster than goal marathon pace.
First you need to know what pace. What pace should you run your speedwork and what pace should you run your tempo?
Your speedwork is going to be somewhere around 1 minute per mile faster than your goal pace. I’ve always rounded down to an even number to make the math easier. For example: when I was targeting a sub 3:10 finishing time, which is a marathon pace in the low 7’s, I would set my speed 1600’s at 6:00 minutes per 1600.
I know you math majors will tell me that there is a difference between 1 mile and 1600M. I know that. At this pace I’d need another 4-5 seconds to actually complete a whole mile. I’m just converting and not worrying about it because it is close enough and I’m in the right ball park.
The exact pace I’m training at in this example is around a 6:05 minute per mile, which is 6:00 minutes per 1600 which is still very close to 1 minute per mile faster than the pace required for a sub 3:10 marathon.
I use the same math for the tempo pace. In this example with a goal of a sub-3:10 marathon I subtract 30 seconds and round down to get a 6:30 tempo pace for the 1600.
Got it?
For an overall training plan or campaign I would do speed intervals on Tuesdays, tempo intervals on Thursday and the long run on the weekend.
In my case I would have a 14-16 week campaign. It would be based on 3 week waves. Week 1 is a low week. Week 2 is a medium week and week 3 is a hard week. Then week 4 becomes another ‘easy’ or recovery week, but each wave builds, so week 4 is about the same difficulty as week 2 and each week 3 is a new peak of volume.
The week 1 starting point for me would be 2 speed intervals on Tuesday, 5 tempo intervals on Thursday and a 13 mile long run. The final peak week would be 5 speed intervals on Tuesday and 8, yes I said ‘8’, tempo intervals on Thursday with a 24+ mile long run.
This kind of volume will get you up into 50 – 60+ miles on the peak weeks.
As you work through a 12-16 week program of 1600’s you’ll notice your form and mechanics getting very good and the intervals will start to hurt less. By the end of the campaign you’ll be able to knock them off with ease.
Again, you end up being in great race shape with the volume and quality of this training, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is to burn in race pace and mechanics. If you have never raced before you may learn a whole new way of using your body by doing this. If you are stuck and can’t get any faster, this will break that logjam.
I’m returning to this methodology now because I find I am in no-man’s land with regards to my current race pace and mechanics. The difference now is that I don’t need or want to train for a sub-3:10 marathon. I need a sub-3:30 marathon.
Let’s do the math. A 3:30 marathon is 8:00 minutes per mile. Subtracting a minute and rounding down I end up with a 1600 interval pace of 6:50 per mile. Subtracting 30 seconds and rounding down I end up with a 7:20 tempo interval.
Now I have to teach these paces to my body. My body doesn’t know these paces. I need to force my pace to be steady at each of the 16 100 meter marks throughout the interval. How do I do this?
I find 100M is a bit short for pace control. Instead I use 200 meter pace control increments. I need to calculate the 200M target times and either memorize them or write them on the track in chalk or create a crib sheet or program them into a device of some sort.
Let’s use the tempo pace. 7:20 for 1600. First you convert the minutes to seconds. 7 times 60 is 420. Add the 20 seconds and you get 440. 440 divided by 8 is 55 seconds per 200M.
Now make a spreadsheet with a column for target 200M splits, 8 of them. You’ll have to monkey with the math to convert seconds back to minutes and seconds because excel thinks in terms of decimal time.
In my example the 200M split of 55 seconds actually makes the math really easy because each split is just 5 seconds less than a minute more. M y target 200M splits are 55, 1:50, 2:45, 3:40, 4:35, 5:30, 6:25 and 7:20.
My speed target of 6:50 is a bit more confusing to remember because 410 seconds divided into 8 is 51.25 seconds. When I’m confronted by fractions of seconds like this I just round because it’s not that precise of a process. You won’t even be able to notice a fraction of a second over 200M.
You need the targets to control and adjust your pace during the interval to make sure you are learning the consistency of pace and form. Each 200M you look at your time, compare it to your target and adjust your pace, form and mechanics to get back on target pace. When you first do this it you will be over correcting, like driving a car with loose steering. Eventually you’ll find the pace.
For 6:50 speed I’ll need approximately the following splits: 51, 1:42, 2:34, 3:25, 4:16, 5:08, 5:59 and 6:50.
These are obviously harder to memorize. I’ll write these down somehow so I don’t have to remember them all until I learn the pace. Once I learn the pace I’ll be able to feel if I’m on it or off it during the interval and will only check the 400M splits – which are much easier to remember.
Interestingly enough when I have had to do these workouts and for some reason could not get the splits during the interval, like it was dark out and the light wasn’t working on my watch, I typically come in about 5 seconds fast, but close enough. Once you have that pace burned in you can run it in your sleep with your eyes closed.
Remember the goal here is not to beat the time. The goal is to run that exact pace and mechanics for the entire interval so you burn it in. I give myself a plus or minus 5 second tolerance for the 1600 but usually am able to hit plus or minus 2 seconds. If you find yourself unable to get within this tolerance you may need to back off to shorter distances until your body figures it out.
Over the course of this campaign you will gain fitness, strength and endurance, but that is a byproduct of the discipline of pace.
There are a lot of moving pieces in training for a marathon, but when you are training for a qualifying marathon time the BAA doesn’t care about anything except finishing time. Finishing time is a product of pacing discipline over the distance. You can programmatically burn in that pacing by systematically running 1600’s down at your local track.
It’s not sexy, but it works.