If you fancy mixing up your regular runs with a training format that will boost your performance and endurance, and give a bit of variety to your usual workouts, we recommend integrating some interval running training.
We spoke to British distance athlete (and all-round running expert) Charlotte Arter about what HIIT running entails, why it’s such a great training approach and some ideas on how to get started. Read on for her tips and advice.
Interval training (also known as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT) consists of repeated bouts of high intensity exercise (work intervals) for a certain time or distance, followed by low intensity exercise (recovery interval) and this is repeated a finite number of times depending on your goals for the training session. So in running terms, interval running involves repeated bouts of high intensity running alternated with low intensity running. The high intensity running is often at race pace or slightly faster and low intensity running is a jog or even a walk.
Intervals can be run using a specific distance or time and can be long or short, depending on your workout goals. For example, a shorter, more intense interval workout could be:
10 x 1 minute with 90 second recovery
So that’s running hard for 1 minute then jogging easy for 90 seconds, repeated 10 times or 5 x 90 seconds with 2 minute recovery, so running hard for 90 seconds then jogging easy for 2 minutes, repeated 5 times.
A longer interval using distance could be
5 x 1km with 0.5km recovery.
So it's up to you whether you prefer to train using time or distance, and the intervals can be any distance or length of time depending on your goals / race you may be training for.
Don’t forget to warm up for five to ten minutes before starting any high intensity exercise and cool down afterwards. The above examples could be used for training for a 5k or a 10k run. As the race distance increases the number of reps should increase and usually the length of the interval. The intervals shouldn’t be absolutely flat out and it should be a pace you can hold for the defined number of repetitions, so roughly an 8/10 effort, it’s better to get slightly faster as the session goes on than go too hard at the beginning! The recovery should allow you time to recover then go again.
