We always used it at my local Rugby and in my later years Rowing Club. It was conducted at the beginning, middle and end of pre season training. Satisfying to see improvements but a seriously tough test if you go to absolute exhaustion(which is the point), everyone hated finding out it was bleep test day (only announced once you had turned up at the session. )
I second the 3x 20-30 minute per week approach under LT1 (i.e easy) No aches and pains after 4 weeks add a 4th few more weeks add a 5th only then increase the duration and slowly.
Every military service rucks with heavier loads at some point. I’m 183lbs so the percentage of my body weight I’m carrying is much lower and so is my risk for injury. Don’t need to do it too often but just a few times will toughen your feet and knees up so it’s not such a shock.
After a couple of months of easy running, assuming you are at 3 runs of 30mins, you could start to stretch out the length of a couple of the sessions (assuming you can fit them around with). So you end up with a long run, a speed run (tempo, threshold or interval) and keep one short run.
As you’ve already suffered burnout on the bike from 2 hard workouts. I’d prob stick to 1 hard session a week. So if you go hard on the run that week, you take it handy on the bike.
With 10-12 hours a week on the bike you’re plenty fit already. I think little speed work will go a long way for you. I’m very similar in terms of fitness, I can handle an absolute pile of volume but need to be careful with intensity. But a small amount seems to have a huge effect.
I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah I guess I may not handle a lot of intensity very well.
I think I’ll stick with 1 run a week for around 2 month, then add 1 more low intensity run a week.
And when It feels comfortable, I’ll 1 easy run and one speed work a week.
I dont think I’ll be able to handle 2 intensity run.
I hope 1 intensity run a week will be enough to see good progress though.
As mentioned already, and in my n=1, aerobically the fitness carries straight over. It’s getting the muscles adjusted, including to the impact. fwiw I ran my pb 10k in an Olympic Triathlon when I hadn’t run for several months due to ITB issues!
I can generally do 5-7km without too much impact, albeit at an easy pace. I did one day when on holiday and I only had an hour free so didn’t have to ride. I hadn’t run since the spring.
It does but you have to run a lot of miles. I ran marathons before I started TT - my best marathons (2:47) were on 60 mostly easy miles/week with once weekly tempo/mp runs. When I ran 40miles/week with intervals the best I managed was 2:50. Of course if you can run 80-100miles/week with intervals and not get injured you’ll be really quick. However, running efficiency mostly comes from increased mileage not speedwork. The great UK middle distance runners of the 80’s - Coe and Ovett ran 100miles/week and smashed it in 10m/10k races in the North of England…you just saw them in the 800m/1500m at the Olympics
No, that is totally incorrect, if understand your post.
There is zero need for fast intervals unless you are training for 800m (and that is pushing it.) 400m and less yes. Steady or slow runs with strides is all you need.
That is a red flag if that continues when getting into or back into running, after an easy run there should be no soreness, that shows you went too long even though at a slow pace.
Think this is the whole “miles vs HIIT” debate we have in cycling too. With enough miles, you don’t need much speedwork. With very little time to train, you might make more progress with HIT, especially in the beginning.
True, you can’t do a lot of intervals if you run a lot of miles. That said, you do need a base of easy miles before you try intervals as it’s much easier to get injured. I also find it tough to run fast and TT at the same time, however, I can run a decent distance. I ran 10 miles this morning on a day off the bike (it was raining) but I only do running races/ speedwork in the winter as my calf and hamstrings won’t take threshold/VO2 work and TT racing on the bike at the same time as running 5/10k races (I gave up marathons 5 years ago!)…but then I’m old…54
To enter the army, there’s a beep test and I want to have the best score I can on it. So I have to get into intensity eventually.
I think you’re right but at the same time I prefer having done it that way.
Because now I know how hard is too hard ( and the point of the run was to test myself a bit to get a feeling, without injuring myself )
I prefer this to taking it too safe and let’s say running 10 minutes, seeing I’m not sore, then running 15 minutes, not being sore either,… and doing so for I don’t know how many times, until I find out I can run let’s say 40 minutes with no soreness.
It may be the safer approach, but I could easily loose 1 or 2 months before actually starting training.
I already ran 3x 15min / 5min above threshold and felt it was too much, so I think 1h easy pace was safe enough.
PS : in the post I said “around september”, but i might have to enroll sooner than I expected, so maybe more around april / may
Yes, sorry, forgot that, so in that case you just want to raise your VO2max as high as possible, you can use cycling, running, rowing. Running specific training is not necessarily required for a good Bleep Test result, although it might help.
I think VO2max is the effort level I perform the best at. It’s the effort level I train the most too during the season ( 4 to 8 times 4min/4min on a climb )
So if it’s about vo2max I’ll feel more confident about it !
Nah this is all pretty specific to you so it’s probably fine!
I’d recommend to treat a ruck like a weight training session. Goal is to improve tendon strength. Again you don’t need to ruck a lot maybe just once every two weeks, a few months out from your enlistment or commissioning for familiarization to prevent injury. If you’ve never felt it your feet muscles don’t take to 15-20kgs suddenly added over 8-10km movement haha.
Rucking then running when your feet are sore can affect your form. Plyometrics before during or after a run can be great for conditioning for an easier mix and match.
One of my favorite go-tos:
10min easy run, burpees
8 min slightly faster, push ups and lunges
6 min slightly faster, v up and squat jump
4 min faster, pick 2 exercises ;
2 min faster, pick 2
Don’t worry about “running faster”. It’s all relative anyway: A 25 minute 5k is fast, but not as fast as a 20 minute 5k, or a 16 minute 5k…
As they said above go carefully from cycling to running. It’s easy enough to get to a point where you can cover a fair distance at a steady pace but you want to be able to keep doing this without having to take random weeks off with niggling injuries.
If you’re new to this, your muscles will adapt pretty quickly as they have good blood flow and that’s what they do. But your connecting tissues, tendons etc will adapt much more slowly and this is where your injury risk comes in. I’ve read somewhere that the tissue adaptation takes place in something like the first 15 minutes of the run and after that there is no extra adaptation. So from this perspective you are better off doing 5 x 15 minute runs per week rather than 1x 60 minute run per week. So run fast or slow, your choice, but run little and often for sure.
4x15mins is certainly better than an hour for consistent running and bone density. That said as a former marathon runner I can tell you that there are plenty of adaptions occuring after 15mins. That said most of the extra adaptions seem to occur after about 2 hours so certainly if you don’t want to race 10k/half or full marathon then capping the run at about 30mins is probably a good idea. If you want to road race above 5k then a 2 hour long run is important
