One main takeaway from the Jack Daniels' training book I am reading is the concept of lactic acid accumulation and your body's ability to clear or process the lactic acid. I had often felt there was a pace during a training run or race that if I exceeded it, my body would soon be overcome by fatigue. I didn't know the scientific basis for this sentiment, but it was a real phenomenon.
Cruise intervals are runs designed to acclimate your body to running with elevated levels of lactic acid. The key is to run at a pace where your body can process the lactic acid to the degree the levels do not accumulate to a point where you become debilitated. This pace is referred to as a threshold pace.
For my cruise interval workout today, I began by running 0.75 miles to warm up. After my muscles were warmed, I ran four sets of one mile intervals with a one minute rest between intervals. My magical threshold pace was on the order of 8 minutes per mile. The temperature today was 32 degrees with no winds. In the spring and summer this pace will moist likely be slightly faster. I completed the workout with a six minute cool down run.
The threshold pace is sometimes described as comfortably hard pace. In my case, it's a pace where I know I am running fast, but I am not laboring to maintain the pace. During today's workout my first three mile intervals were run at a pace close to my target eight minute per mile pace. I had to run the fourth mile interval at a much slower pace in order to not accumulate too great of a lactic acid buildup.
As is this case with much of my training, I ran too many miles of cruise intervals today. I failed to read Jack Daniels' qualifier for this workout stating the total distance should be limited to 8% of my weekly total mileage. He states if you are running twenty miles per week (which I am) you should only do one and a half miles of cruise intervals. This would translate to running three sets of one half mile interval runs.
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