Interval Training.

The purpose of this type of training is to condition your body to run at race speed, but without killing yourself in training.  You do this by running at race speed for a set distance followed by a  jog / recovery. 

The time for each interval depends on your race speed and therefore will vary from runner to runner. Short distance may be at your 5km race speed, longer distance at 10km race speed. When you start an interval training session you may find the first interval is a bit slower than target, but you get faster on the 2nd and 3rd interval. This can be a problem if you are trying to run to a Garmin watch. By the end of the interval your heart rate should be getting to >80% of maximum. As a rough guide maximum is 220 - your age. So if you are 50 years old that is 220 - 50 = 170 bpm. 80% of this is 136 bpm.

The recovery needs to be one to two minutes and you should keep moving. As a rough guide a one minute recovery will be about the same as walking 100 m at a brisk pace. As you become fitter the recovery period can be reduced. However, by the end of the recovery period your heart rate should have dropped to 120 bpm. If this takes more than 2 minutes then stop the session. You will not get any more benefit from continuing.

Interval training sessions should be undertaken once or twice per week. Start easy and build up. Quality is more important than quantity. If you don't have access to a 400m track then  run on one of the many marked running surfaces around the parks in Dubai. I am using the track inside Al Barsha Park. It is 1500m long and marked every 100m. for a map showing other tracks go to

http://www.dubai-road-runners.com/saferunningindubai.html

Warm up before you start a session.

To down load a program of interval training sessions adapted to your running pace click below.