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the morning shakeout

Tempo runs are a staple workout for many runners and with good reason: they’re very effective at improving fitness, focus, discipline, and grit. They also tend to cause some of the most confusion. In general, a...

Running long this week/weekend? Those miles are going to be a sizable chunk of your total weekly volume. Don’t waste ’em! Avoid a sloppy slog and help the time pass a little quicker by throwing in a 30-60 secon...

Nicole D

Workout of the Week: Long Run with Surges

I first read about this workout, made popular by former Boston winner and marathon world champion Rob De Castella of Australia, in Michael Sandrock’s Running With The Legends (one of my favorite running books o...

Not only does this workout share its name with one of my favorite covers of all-time, it also happens to be one of my favorite sessions to assign my athletes. In fact, if I were only allowed to use one interval...

Workout of the Week: Three is a Magic Number

I love ladder sessions. It’s a great feeling mentally when you start coming back down the ladder and know the longest intervals are behind you. This workout is not that and that’s exactly the point. Here are th...

I came up with this workout for the Wednesday night track crew I coach as a fun way to get in a high volume of quality work while also practicing how to be disciplined, stay focused, and go through a wide range...

One of my favorite all-purpose workouts to assign my athletes, whether they’re burning rubber on the track, shredding grass on the cross-country course, kicking up dirt on the trails, locking into a rhythm on t...

Tempo run or short hill repeats for your next workout? Trick question. The answer is both! I like to combine different training elements from time to time to keep workouts interesting and help us get a little s...

Mike H

Workout of the Week: Pardon the Uphill Interruption

If you look at the training schedules of top runners throughout recent history it’s more likely than not that you’ll find regular bouts of tempo running in there. Why? Quite simply: It works. Tempo runs, which ...

Most interval sessions are pretty straightforward in their construction: X number of [fill in the blank] intervals @ Y pace with Z recovery between repetitions. There’s nothing wrong with these types of workout...

This workout is all about that base. It’s a relatively straightforward session that combines a set of short (30-60”) hill repeats with a moderate dose of steady state running (think marathon-ish effort). It’s p...

Workout of the Week: Hills and a Steady Chill

As an athlete, the Mona Fartlek is one of my favorite workouts to do; as a coach, it’s one that I’ll often assign a few times throughout a training cycle. What I love about this session is that it’s efficient a...

More often than not, when a runner’s performances start to stagnate it’s a sign that there’s not enough variety in the training program, they’re not recovering well from the work they’re doing day after day, or...

This workout was introduced to me by coach Kevin Curtin when I was running for New Balance Boston—now Battle Road Track Club—about 17 years ago. We would use it early in a training block as a sort of reintroduc...

The long run, for me, is a fickle beast, with the emphasis changing from week to week depending on what we’re trying to get out of it. It doesn’t always have to be long and slow; sometimes we’ll alternate paces...

Workout of the Week: The Alternating Miles Long Run

I’ve always believed that to run your best half-marathon you should be in really good 10K shape—and if you’re in ripping 10K shape, you should be able to run a really good half-marathon. There’s a lot of overla...

Let me know if this situation sounds familiar: You’re in no-man’s land midway through a half-marathon or marathon. Or maybe you’ve been towing a group for several miles and none of the other runners in it want ...

Workout of the Week: Surging Mile Repeats

I first wrote about The Michigan workout several years ago for  That article now lives in Outside’s Running category but the gist of the session is that it blends a set of descending intervals on the track (eac...

Workout of the Week: The Reverse Michigan

Let’s face it: Training for a marathon or half-marathon can get monotonous. Both programs involve lots of sustained running at or around goal race pace. This is part of the deal, of course, and an important com...

Workout of the Week: The In-n-Out Tempo Run

One-kilometer repeats are a pretty standard workout for many runners training for the mile all the way up to the marathon, and no matter how you slice ’em, they tend to make for a tough session. You can do a ha...

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