Try tweener repeats for base season training

Making the transition from off-season to base training can sometimes be awkward. You know you need to start doing some speed work again, but your body isn’t quite ready to jump into hard interval sessions and long tempo runs. This is where tweener repeats come in. This moderate-intensity workout will re-introduce speedwork to your legs without wiping you out and ease the transition between the off-season and your next training block.

Tweener repeats

Also known as cruise intervals, tweener repeats are run at a pace between your lactate threshold and your VO2 max (hence the name). The intervals are short and the pace is controlled so you can get a good workout in without creating a tonne of fatigue. The rest should also be long enough for you to recover between intervals, and the total length of the workout (minus warm-up and cool-down) shouldn’t be more than three to six kilometers.

When performing this workout, it’s important to remember the goal: to re-introduce harder running and prepare your body for harder workouts later on in your training block. It’s very important not to run these too hard and turn the session into a VO2 max workout because you should be saving that kind of intensity for later on. If you go overboard now, you risk burning yourself out by the time you reach the peak of your training season.

With that in mind, if you’re going to do these intervals on a track, you may want to consider not timing them, especially if you find it hard to hold back in that setting. Instead, focus on running a quick but very controlled pace. By the end of the workout, you should feel like you worked hard but you still have some left in the tank.

Example workouts

If you’re doing your workout on the track, some examples could include:

6-8 x 800m with 2-3 minutes rest

6-8 x 600m with 2-3 minutes rest

8 x 500m with 2 minutes rest

8-10 x 400m with 2 minutes rest

*Note that you can lengthen the rest for any of the above workouts if you are not recovered by the end of the rest period.

If you don’t have access to a track, you can do tweener repeats on the road as well:

6-8 x 3 minutes with 2-3 minutes rest

8-10 x 2 minutes with 2 minutes rest

10-12 x 1 minute with 1 minute rest

posted Friday February 11th
by Brittany Hambleton