Threshold Volume Luke Humphrey Running

As a coach or an athlete, we look for guides as to how much work is an appropriate amount for a given athlete. I have mentioned this before, but again, often we discuss the 80/20 rule in training- 80% of our work should be easy and 20% hard. The question then becomes what is hard and what is easy, and in terms of hard, how should that look? So, I’d like to break down some general guidelines. In terms of the 20%, for most of my athletes, that’s going to be anything faster than half marathon pace. However, when talking about true definitions of hard, researchers will argue that 20% is anything harder than the lactate threshold, or the pace that you can hold for about an hour. Race pace, that’s anything from 10k pace to just under 20k race pace for my fastest athletes. 







Right now, let’s look at threshold work. Now to be clear as mud, the term threshold has a lot of names. The most current is LT2, which stands for 2nd lactate threshold. In practical matters, it’s the point where blood lactate starts to accumulate exponentially. You have probably also heard the terms anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold, the onset of blood lactate accumulation, or maximal lactate steady state. These are the same thing. 







Ok, got it? Good! Now, what you want to know- how much can I include in my weekly volume? Well, the rule of thumb appears to be that I can include about 10% of my weekly mileage in the form of threshold work. 







Now, I must caveat this with the point that, when reading this, don’t think that every week should include 10% threshold work. No, we are just saying that when including threshold work, these should be your guidelines. 







What kind of workouts should I be doing?







At the basis of theory, you have two options. The first is the traditional tempo. The second would be repeated at your LT. Is either of them better than the other? I wouldn’t say that, as both have a place in training and they both have different features. So, any type of runner would benefit from incorporating both. 







Tempos:







Most coaches agree that a 20-minute tempo at LT is the staple of building stamina in the endurance runner. Now, coaches will extend those out based on ability. For example, coach Joe Vigil talks about extending these out to 6-8+ miles for his elite runners. On the other hand, Jack Daniel’s talks about doing longer tempo runs, but slowing the pace down, the further you go so that by the time you get to about 60 minutes, the pace is much closer to the marathon pace than the original threshold pace. 







As a lower mileage runner, a 20-30 minute tempo run might essentially be your 2-3 miles allotted for a threshold allowance for the week. It might also be a pretty tough run. If you are a higher mileage runner a 20-minute tempo might be 4 miles, but you are under that 10% allotment. We then have an issue- do we get that extra few miles in another workout, make the current workout longer, or just let it go? That’s where LT repeats can come in for both groups. 







LT repeats would be like any other repeat you did for speed, just a little slower (maybe) and less recovery. You might end up with a little overall volume. Overall, we are looking at repeats that are maybe 3+ minutes in length with a pretty short recovery. For most athletes repeats of 800’s to km’s are the Goldilocks distance. 







6-10 x 800







5-10 x 1k







4-8 x 1200 







These would all be staple workouts. 







 like the repeat for a few different avenues. One, when just building up. These make a lot of sense for all groups. Whether you are just starting as a beginner or just the beginning of a segment.