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Here’s Scott’s plan:

Hello,

Our workout next week will be 400m intervals, which may sound scary but they are the bread and butter for many runners. The objective is to run at least 6 of these – 8 to 10 is better, with a relatively short rest in between. The long term goal is to be able to do 10 at your target pace with ~1 minute recovery jogs (200m is about right) in between, but some may have to work up to that level. You never want to give more than 90-95% in these workouts, and should walk away knowing you could have done a couple more.

I try to do one of these workouts every two weeks or so, and I’ve correlated them with several of my PRs including one of my best half-marathons. The benefits of these workouts are to help develop speed, but more importantly, and improve your lactate threshold which many of us experience as a burning sensation in our legs when we run up hills or near the finish of a race.

Approximate target paces from McMillan Running are:

5k pace 400m split

23:00 1:39 to 1:43

21:00 1:30 to 1:34

19:00 1:22 to 1:25

17:00 1:13 to 1:16

Hope to see you next week!