Is the Hype About “Double Threshold” Workouts Justified?

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Melancon, and this is the Run to the Top podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. You're created and produced by the expert team of coaches at runnersconnectdot net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. If you've been tracking write ups in the media or public sentiment on all the message boards out there, double thresholds are all the rage right now. And given the moment we're in, I thought it would be good to have Runners Connect head coach Michael Hammond on the show to break everything down and help us determine whether it's something this audience should consider for training purposes. This is a wide ranging conversation with Michael. We cover a lot, but some of the specifics discussed include the backstory of how double threshold workouts became popular in the US and abroad, how double thresholds work, where they're inserted in training blocks, and what the purported benefits are, what to do in between workouts, and how to assess whether it's a type of day that you wanna insert into your own block, the differences between a pro runner and an amateur runner attempting to double threshold and what to consider in these different scenarios, the super shoe effect on double thresholds, and much more.

Finn Melanson [00:01:30]: Coach Michael brings a lot of wisdom to this episode. So if you've been curious given the increasing popularity of this topic, this episode is for you. We've got coach Michael Hammond on the show today. Coach Michael, how are you doing today?

Michael Hammond [00:01:48]: I'm doing great, Fin. Thanks for having me on, man.

Finn Melanson [00:01:50]: We were just talking offline that we are about to wade into the waters of, quite a popular topic hot button issue slash workout these days, and that is this whole History of it. Where would you want listeners to kind of like dip into it?

Michael Hammond [00:02:16]: Oh, I'd love to answer that question because, you know, I'm not a scientist. I don't have a PhD. I like to give things in as layman's terms as possible. So really, when I look at the double threshold, let's first just talk about threshold training. Because if we're talking about talk about the double, we need to understand the single first, right? Where ultimately what threshold training is, you look at lactate. What lactate is, lactate when your body when you exercise, when you run, your body uses glucose for fuel, right? A byproduct of that, a waste product is lactate. You are able to clear that from your body very easily. Like you and I sitting here talking at rest, we're very easily clearing what little lactate is being produced in our blood.

Michael Hammond [00:02:56]: Right? So it's if if you look at the measurement, at rest you have somewhere around 1 millimole of lactate per liter of blood in your body. Okay? Once you start to if I were to put you on a treadmill and say, Okay, now we're going to start running a nice easy pace, very, very easy running pace, that lactate is probably still going to stay very, very low. It's going to stay mostly flat line because you're running a super easy pace. You could run that all day, you know, injuries notwithstanding, you could run that all day. Once you once I tell you, okay, now let's get up to maybe somewhere around marathon pace, it's going to depend on the individual what that pace looks like. Now what we're going to start to see is a slow rise in that lactate in your blood. Why we're going to see that? Your body can't clear it out as well. Your body can clear it out really well when you and I are sitting here talking or when you're walking or when you're running really easy.

Michael Hammond [00:03:47]: Once you start running, again, somewhere around marathon pace, we'll get more specific with it later, that lactate starts to rise. That's what's known as LT1. I like to talk about it in terms of LT1 and LT2. Sometimes people will say LT1, they'll refer to it as the aerobic threshold, but that's where that lactate starts to rise a little faster than your body is able to clear it out. So if you think of a graph, we're starting to move up a little bit on that curve. Right? That's roughly that's your LT1, that's roughly 3 hour race pace. If I were to put you on a track and say run, you have 3 hours to run as much distance as you can, that would roughly be your LT1. Then you get to a point if I tell you, okay, you're on that treadmill, I'm like, hey, let's pick up the pace a little bit more, Then you're going to get to a point called LT 2 where that lactate really starts to rise.

Michael Hammond [00:04:35]: This is the LT 2 lactate threshold 2. This is where that curve really starts to ramp up very, very high and that is what's typically known as your lactate. When people say lactate threshold, that's typically the one that they mean is that LT 2. I like the LT 1 and LT 2 because it just makes more sense to me. Like 1 is the first one that you hit, you know, when you're picking up the pace. 2 is the second one that you hit. And the reason I mentioned the millimole per liter of blood at that LT1, we typically see right about 2 millimole. Remember, you're at 1 millimole just sitting here listening to this episode.

Michael Hammond [00:05:10]: We're gonna have people that are running. They're gonna be like, No, I'm at whatever moment. But then once you hit LT 2, that's about 4 millimole per liter of blood. And remember past that point, this is a curve graph. This is not a linear rising graph. There's curves and LT 1 is that first threshold where it starts to rise. LT2 is that second big threshold where it starts to just soar. So it starts to rise after LT1, it starts to soar after LT2.

Michael Hammond [00:05:37]: That's really the basic primer. That's how I again, people talk about aerobic threshold, anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold. I think it gets really confusing. If you just think of that graph and think about as you start running harder, you're going to hit LT 1, then you start running even harder than that, you hit LT 2, then that's pretty much the primer on on how lactate training works, how lactate threshold works.

Finn Melanson [00:05:57]: And I know we're going to talk about, like, what is double threshold in a second, but to stay on this sort of introductory line of questioning, there are gonna be people that are thinking, like, to find these various thresholds, do I need technology like a lactate meter? Can I do it based off of, like, perceived exertion and intuitiveness, or is a coach gonna kinda guide me? How do you like to think about that discovery?

Michael Hammond [00:06:22]: Definitely. That's that's definitely the the kind of the $1,000,000 question because, hey, if you're somebody listening and you have $500 laying around that you don't mind spending on your running, then go buy yourself a lactate meter. It's going to be worth it. It's going to be awesome. It's kind of annoying because you have to sit there and prick yourself either and typically they do it in the finger or in the ear like your earlobe. That's typically where they like to do it because it makes the least mess. And you're gonna look at your blood lactate. If you're willing to do that and you're willing to drop $500 or maybe it's sometimes up to a1000, then heck, yeah, go do it.

Michael Hammond [00:06:52]: That's probably not the case for most people because there's better ways to spend $500 In terms of technology though, I would say that you can use stuff like heart rate to a degree. Always the issue with heart rate is that your heart rate when you start Think about if you go for a tempo run, your heart rate at the beginning of that tempo run is very different than your heart rate at the end. Whereas ideally when you're doing this this very targeted lactate threshold type training, you want your lactate to stay roughly even, like you don't want it to rise above a certain level. So when I'm working with people and when we're working with people at Runner's Connect, what we tell people is we try to give like a pace range as much as possible. We ultimately, when we work with a lot of people, we kind of have to give them paces because it's very hard for the average person to understand things like effort levels and effort zones. That's that can get very for something that should be very simple can ultimately become a very complex thing. So we do have to give ranges, but we always on the side of caution. And I think that's going to be a continuing theme throughout this discussion of threshold in particular like double threshold is that you can under do a threshold workout and still get a lot of benefit.

Michael Hammond [00:08:05]: You can't overdo it and still get a lot of benefit. We just talked about that LT 1 and LT 2. Once you go over that LT 2, if you'll recall what I said earlier that that that lactate starts to rise after LT 1, it starts to soar after LT 2. So as soon as you get above that LT 2 type pace, that lactate is going to absolutely soar and the workout is going to get completely out of control. So something I like to see, I really like to see people, one one thing that I'll tell people commonly is for any type of threshold workout, the way I phrase it is I could say, leave 1 in the tank. So if I give you 5 times a mile at a roughly a threshold effort, threshold pace, I want you to finish that 5 by mile with a minute rest thereabouts, maybe a minute 90 seconds. I want you to finish that and be able to do a 6th one if you had to. You're not going to do it.

Michael Hammond [00:08:57]: You're not going to actually go and do that 6th one, but I want you to be able to. That's sort of the we'll call it like the layman's way of doing lactate meter. So if you're sitting there with a lactate meter, then you're monitoring where your lactate is, you're trying to keep it between that 23 ish under 4 millimole per liter. But this is kind of our way of sort of the layman's way of doing it is making sure that you underrun it because remember, you'd much, much, much rather under run any sort of threshold workout than overrun it. You're still going to get a lot of benefit even if you're under those LT1 and LT2 numbers.

Finn Melanson [00:09:32]: Excellent primer. And so when we come back to the question of what is double threshold training, you mentioned like LT one, LT 2. Are we talking here about like consecutive LT 1 workouts, consecutive LT 2 workouts? Does it depend? Walk us through like the what is of that.

Michael Hammond [00:09:51]: Yeah. For double threshold, what the people that popularize this are the Ingebretsen brothers. So Jacob Ingebretsen is a name that a lot of people in the running world know now. Olympic 1500 meter champion, world 5000 meter champion, and these are these Norwegian brothers who are just like dominating the running scene. And the way that they do it and I think it's worth it to look at how they do it, not that this is entirely applicable to most people listening, but it's worth it to look at how they do it. They typically will do the morning they'll do it, and when we're talking about double threshold, this means you're doing 1, 2 sessions in a day. You're doing 1 in the morning and you're doing 1 in the afternoon, evening. The morning one, typically, they will do closer to that LT1, so more like marathon ish pace.

Michael Hammond [00:10:35]: I keep saying marathon ish pace because if you'll recall earlier, I said LT1 is basically your 3 hour race pace. If you're a 3 hour marathoner, I got good news for you. Your LT1 is essentially your marathon pace. I mean, it's pretty easy. If you're a 4 hour marathoner, it's going to be a little bit faster than your marathon race pace. If you're a You know, if Elliot Kipchoge is listening to this, then LT1 is going to be a little bit slower than than his his marathon race pace. Right? So basically, they do that first one closer to LT1, so they'll do something along the lines of 10 by 2 k. And I know that sounds like a or I'm sorry, 5 by 2 k, 10 by 1 k in the afternoon.

Michael Hammond [00:11:15]: 5 by 2 k, 2 kilometers with like a minute rest at about that LT1. That's not a particularly hard workout if you think about it. And I think that's really going to be something I'm going to try to get across today is that these workouts aren't really that hard. I think that is one of the most essential components of threshold training in general and I think something that double threshold training has done a tremendous job at promoting is that that idea that training does not have to be so hard. So he'll do 5 by 2 ks in the morning, LT 1, a little above LT 1 because remember, you can pass LT 1, that's okay. Once you pass LT2, you're in trouble. That's when these workouts are going to get real, real hard. And then they'll come back in the afternoon and do, you know, 8 to 10 by 1 kilometer with a minute rest at really trying to push a little bit closer to that LT 2.

Michael Hammond [00:12:03]: So the afternoon one is faster. The morning one is a little bit, maybe a tiny bit longer, a little bit more volume, certainly longer intervals and overall easier. And they also see that morning one is kind of a primer for that afternoon one. I know that's hard to picture because you're exhausting yourself in the morning for an afternoon session, but that's really the way that they look at it is that the morning one is really not that hard to the point where it kind of becomes a primer and the afternoon workout actually eventually once you're obviously well trained and able to handle this can actually become a better overall session. So LT1 in the morning, LT2 in the afternoon, roughly thereabouts is what they're focusing on and what most people who are trying to actually implement this are doing.

Finn Melanson [00:12:46]: I'm sure there's a a bunch of listeners out there thinking about the why of this work out, like where you would fit it inside a training block. So maybe talk a bit about the potential benefits of this type of workout and also whether it's more, useful for athletes that are training for particular distance or event over others?

Michael Hammond [00:13:07]: Yeah, I really think the primary benefit is very simple. It's just a way to fit more threshold training into any given week. You know, you get these guys that we're talking about, these professional athletes, these guys are training already training twice a day typically for, you know, 7 days a week, 3, you know, 20 fourseven, 3 65. So for them, it's a way to just fit more of that threshold training, more of that quality within a given week. Very, very simple. I think for one of the biggest benefits that I have seen, I alluded to this earlier, one of the biggest benefits I've seen is the fact that it's getting people to just rethink what a threshold workout looks like and getting people to better understand holding back in training. You know, there's a very popular style of training. 8020 is extremely popular right now in the running world and in endurance.

Michael Hammond [00:13:58]: And I have an issue with 80twenty and I think my issue with it is that if you look at it on the surface, 80twenty, by the way, refers to 80% of your training being easy, 20% being hard. The problem with that, I think it should be better phrased as 80% easy, 20% not easy. I think that would be the much better way to phrase it because you'll have people who will approach that and they'll say, Oh, eightytwenty. This sounds great. Let's do that. Let's implement that. They'll do 80% of their running easy. That's tremendous.

Michael Hammond [00:14:24]: That's awesome. And then they'll do 20% hard. Hard, hard, hard ripping workouts all out, you know, absolutely going to the well on their sessions and stuff. That's not really what this is all about. I think that this whole thing coming out of, you know, really the origins kind of lie in Norway. We keep talking I've been talking about the Ingebritsens, but really it was Marius Bakken who was a Norwegian runner kind of circa like 2000 thereabouts, 1306, 5000 meter, top 10 in the world, 5000 meters, a couple times I believe. And he's the one who really like researched this, used himself as a guinea pig. I love reading about him because I love someone who's just willing to make themselves a guinea pig, just test out stuff.

Michael Hammond [00:15:05]: He even got to the point, he tested out doing like 4 sessions in a day, like 4 runs in a day just because he he was just a madman, like a mad scientist out to find out how fast he could run. He's the one who really popularized this and I think that that was really where the benefits came about was that you were able to fit more quality training and yet he found that he would do most of it wasn't really that crazy hard. So versus that 80 20 model where you're doing 20 20 percent hard, now you're doing you're not necessarily doing 80 20, you're doing like a lot of really moderate style training. There's more specific benefits you can get into in terms I mean, again, we're talking about LT 1, LT 2. We want to raise both of those as much as possible. That's really what getting fitter is all about, getting to where you can handle faster paces for longer before that lactate buildup becomes overwhelming. We all know that feeling. You know, last lap of a 5 k, last 400 meters of a 5 k where that lactate buildup is just brutal.

Michael Hammond [00:16:01]: You can barely lift your legs. That's we want to extend that as much as possible. So anything that's working on that LT1, LT2 is going to be good. There's other benefits in terms of double threshold, in terms of sort of, like I said, that primer that they see. They see that AM session as sort of being the primer for the afternoon one, but also just in terms of, you know, accumulated fatigue. At Runner's Connect, we'll often give people If someone joins Runner's Connect, joins our training plans, they've never run a marathon before, they've never done more than like, you know, 20, 30, maybe even like 35 miles a week. And we're not going to and and they have like 4 months till their marathon. We're not going to build them up to like a 22 mile a bunch of 22 mile long runs.

Michael Hammond [00:16:39]: It's not possible. That's basically what they're running in a week. Instead, what we'll do is we'll do we'll build them up to at least a 16. That's what we like to see as kind of the minimum. And the day before, they'll do what we call a steady run, which by the way, steady is basically that LT 1. So LT 1 and steady, I'm going to use those somewhat interchangeably. I usually like to use LT 1, but we'll give them like a steady run or about marathon pace. The next day, they'll come back and do a marathon.

Michael Hammond [00:17:03]: That's just working on or I'm sorry, do a long a marathon long run, like 16 ish miles with some of it even at marathon pace. The idea there of being accumulated fatigue can be good to, 1, just teach your body how to run fast when how to run faster when it's tired, but also there's even more specific benefits to like recruiting, you know, slow twitch or fast twitch fibers, you know, once you exhaust those slow twitch fibers. There's all sorts of specifics you can get into so there's a lot of benefits, but I really think to put it in a nutshell, it's really just more threshold training in any given week. I think it's really that simple.

Finn Melanson [00:17:40]: Couple of things I wanna restate because I think you dropped a lot of great knowledge there. A, the fact that these workouts are not that hard, I think, is is a great takeaway. There is this benefit to sort of being limited psychologically, like you're holding back and training because you know you have that other event later in the day. You can fit more quality in in general. I wanna lean more into what you were just saying earlier or one of the last things you said about, like, doing like, one of the things about these workouts is you will ultimately have to do more quality in the back half of the day when you're at least fairly fatigued and you're only just beginning the recovery process from the earlier session? And I guess my question based off that is, would you be better served just doing another workout later in the week when you've had, like, that proper 24 to 72 hours of recovery? Like, do you do you see there being a legitimate benefit to doing quality on pretty tired legs?

Michael Hammond [00:18:41]: Yeah. That's a great question. And I think it's I have to relate this to our audience as much as possible. This is something you and I talked about before we recorded this is that when I'm talking about a topic like this and when I'm talking about these elite athletes and what they're doing, I always like to give the caveat that Jakob Ingebretsen is a sponsored athlete. He's one of the best athletes in the world. He makes a lot of money to do what he does. He does not go to a job. Does not have actually, I was about to say he doesn't have children.

Michael Hammond [00:19:09]: He's actually going to have a child in June. So maybe things will change at that point. We'll see. But the point there being that it's very different for 22, 23 year old Jacob Vengabritzen with a full, you know, sponsor, maybe even has like a personal chef and stuff, extremely different situation than probably your average person listening who's doing that morning run, going to work all day, maybe even on their feet for a lot of that time, sitting in a car or whatever, and then coming home and doing the 2nd session. That's obviously tremendously different. I do think that there's still potentially benefit to it, but I will say that I I think that for most people I I don't want to throw all this discussion out. I I still think that they're talking about double threshold is so, so worth it and there's important lessons to it beyond just do 2 threshold runs in a day, but I think that your average person listening should almost certainly not jump into double threshold training. I think that it's probably going to lead to injury and overtraining fatigue.

Michael Hammond [00:20:05]: But what you said what you said about like doing it later in the week or doing it around another day, I think is perfect. What was I just talking about with what we do at Runner's Connect with how we kind of do the day before a long run during marathon training, we'll do a steady run. That's just working on that accumulated fatigue going into that long run with already somewhat tired legs, not necessarily exhausted legs, but going into it with somewhat tired legs. So in terms of relating it to the average person that's actually listening to this, I would definitely say that there are better ways to do it necessarily than than double threshold. I mean, the Ingebritzens will do 2 double threshold days per week. So every Tuesday, Thursday, they're doing double threshold. Threshold morning, threshold evening, threshold morning, threshold evening, Tuesday, Thursday, every single week. That almost certainly is an unsustainable schedule for everyone.

Michael Hammond [00:20:53]: I mean, for anyone who's not a high level professional athlete, where that's your job, where you're able to recovery is part of your job, you know. So, yeah, I definitely think that there's other ways that you can structure this. There's there's lessons and benefits that you can take to this type of training without having to go and do a morning evening session that maybe you can't fit in at all and even if you can is going to be completely and totally exhausting.

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Michael Hammond [00:24:09]: Oh, that's a great question. I I love that because it brings me back to Marius Bakken who, like I said, he really thought of himself as a guinea pig. This guy did I think that that he in his little report and I I think we should probably link this in the show notes if we can. He has like a I'll send it to you, Finn. He has like a a blog post that has kinda become sort of like the de facto Bible of double threshold training. And he, at some point, he says, like, how many lactate tests he estimates that he went through during that period of time where he was just testing all the stuff. It was in the many thousands of lactate tests that he did. And I think what he found is that this was the optimal amount for him to do and yet still recover.

Michael Hammond [00:24:46]: So he pushed that envelope already. And this is, again, this is a 1306 5000 meter man when 1306, I know that's I mean, I know it's still insanely fast today, obviously. Of of course, I didn't mean it. I I was about to say, oh, it's not that fast today. Of course, it's insanely, ridiculously, preposterously fast, but my point being that kind of in the era of, like, the super shoes and and all that stuff, 13 0 6 isn't quite what it was 20 years ago when when Marius Bakken, but he was still a very high level athlete, pushed himself hard and really tested this stuff because he was both an athlete and a, you know, an exercise scientist. He wanted to look at this stuff as an athlete and also from the research side, and he tested that. I really think that ultimately that's kind of the same case with any level of training that you do is that you can't go do a hard workout every single day. What does your average new runner typically do? They think, I'm just gonna go run as hard as I can for x amount of time as long as I can every single day.

Michael Hammond [00:25:40]: And, of course, that's typically actually where they end up coming to us at Runner's Connect is because they get injured or they they get hurt and they're like, I've got the bug now. I wanna I wanna do this and I wanna get better at it, but I just don't know what I'm doing. And I think that comes from a lot of other sports and a lot of other mentalities. I call it the, kind of the the Gatorade commercial mentality where it's like give a 110% all the time, everything you got. That doesn't really work well in running. It's not that you don't need to be mentally tough because you do. It's not that you don't need to work hard because you do. It's just a totally different endeavor.

Michael Hammond [00:26:13]: And I think that's something that the the Norwegians in general, not necessarily in running, but in, like, endurance sports in general, cycling, triathlon. Cycling and triathlon are usually miles and miles ahead of running on this stuff. That's that's on all the all the nutrition and kind of the exercise science stuff. They're always miles and miles ahead. Running is always a few steps behind, and it definitely is with this stuff. And the thing that they understand that I think this type of discussion gets into is that all this stuff, this is endurance. This isn't how how fast can you run run a 100 meters. This isn't, you know, training hard, hard, hard in the weight room to get bigger and stronger.

Michael Hammond [00:26:50]: This is endurance. This is a a 26.2 mile run. A marathon is an endurance event. That is that requires miles and miles and miles, not ripping hard speed sessions. So anyway, to to bring it back to your question about, like, why not just do it more, I really think it's because they're they're pushing the limits, but you have to find that limit. And eventually, yeah, you do you get over that red line. That red line is so you know, it's it's kind of stares you in the face and once you get over it, it's really hard to get back on the right side of it. So that's really Mario is back and found that and that's what he really saw as the optimal number of those workouts to do.

Michael Hammond [00:27:26]: And I think these guys are training so hard. I think they if you ask any of them, they'd be like, Yeah, no way we could handle another session every week. Like, we're killing ourselves in training. We're approaching that red line as hard as we can and there's no way we could do any more than

Finn Melanson [00:27:41]: that. Coming back to something that you acknowledged earlier is the fact that certainly there are different realities between the pro athletes of the world and the, frequent listeners of this show, myself included. And a lot of it comes down to the recovery opportunities between workouts and the fact that these pros can have the luxury of, you know, staying as horizontal as possible between workouts, maybe stepping into a hyperbaric chamber, you know, stuff like that. But for those instances in a given year, if one of our listeners is thinking like I wanna give this a try, the coach kinda signs off on it, What does the ideal experience look like between these 2 workouts on a given day with regard to like what you would want them to be eating, how much, what recovery looks like, what would like the day in a life of a double threshold workout look like for our listeners?

Michael Hammond [00:28:37]: I love that you brought up the part about, like, the elite athletes because I actually I talked to Fiona O'Keefe on our podcast a few weeks ago who Fiona won the US Olympic marathon trials Yeah. In the marathon. And she we were talking about how funny it is to to describe, like, a nap in the middle of the day. She takes a nap most days and and to describe that as like work, you know. Like, that's that is absolutely part of her job. That's so if hey, if you want the ideal, if you want the absolute ideal, go listen to the Fiona O'Keefe podcast. But, of course, that's not the reality for 99.9% of people. I mean, everyone listening to this, that's not their reality.

Michael Hammond [00:29:10]: What I would say is if you really wanna do it and I would encourage anyone to at least try it. I think it could be worth it just to see what it's like, just for fun. As I said, I really I really look at a guy like Maurice Bakken. I love just that mentality of just being willing to try things, you know, just being willing to try something and just see maybe it doesn't work for you. Maybe it's not right for your situation. But if you are that person who's like, man, this this is exciting even though maybe it's kind of dumb and silly, I'm still gonna go try it. I would say that fueling is going to be absolute number 1. I'm not going to tell you that rest is number 1 because, again, that's just not most people's reality.

Michael Hammond [00:29:42]: Most people's reality after that morning session is gonna be to chug a cup of coffee on the way to work and and to go work an 8 hour day. That's gonna be most people's reality. So I think in terms of controlling what you can, the biggest thing would be fuel. So after that morning session, you gotta be getting breakfast. You know, you can't you can't just chug a coffee and and and grab a pastry. You know, you you gotta actually have a breakfast even if that means preparing it the night before, having something ready, you know, something that has a fairly substantial amount of carbs, proteins and fats, you know, a very healthy healthy but also going to fuel you up and help you recover from that session. Same thing with lunch, you know, you got to have something substantial. You cannot just even if you have that breakfast, you cannot then go all day at work without eating and then expect to get another threshold session in the evening.

Michael Hammond [00:30:30]: There's no way. So I would say if if somebody wants to try out a day like that, you gotta prep the days ahead or the day ahead. You gotta get these get your get your meals ready, especially that lunch, like while you're at work, you can't you can't wing it on a day like this. You have to be prepared. You gotta get some good carbs in you before, you know, the workout. Even I would even encourage people to have stuff like snacks, have like fruit or bars or whatever sits well with you so that maybe you're on the drive home from work in the evening or in the afternoon and you're getting ready, you know, you know, you got that second threshold session coming up. All right. Let's top up a little bit.

Michael Hammond [00:31:07]: Let's get a bar in. Let's get a banana, something along those lines just to top up a little bit. Make sure that you are well fueled because if you're not, it's that second session is going to be brutal. I mean, it's already not going to be terribly fun after a morning session and a full day of work, but it's going to be really brutal if you're under fueled. So I would say just control what you can, but the most important thing and the the thing that's most within your control in that situation is definitely gonna be fuel.

Finn Melanson [00:31:34]: You know, one thing, you because I sent you a list of questions that we might cover and you sent back this possible topic around the super shoe effect. And you basically said that, you know, this workout would not be as popular right now if it were not for Super Shoes because there's a huge recovery benefit there. So would you also suggest that if listeners can get their hands on a pair of Super Shoes, in an ideal world, they would be doing these double threshold days in, like, an Alpha Fly.

Michael Hammond [00:32:01]: Oh, man. Hey. Remember what I said earlier about, like, if you've got $500 laying around for a lactate meter? If you've got 1,000 per year laying around, then get yourself multiple pairs of super shoes because that's what the Engelbreitzens are doing, man. They're doing every single one of these sessions in Super Shoes, and I definitely, definitely think that there's that that's a huge factor. Someone someone whose opinion I really like on this is a guy named Cam Levins. Cam Cam is a a Canadian, now a marathoner, but he's my age and he was you know, I I don't know that I ever directly raced him because I was racing more like 1500 meters in college and he was more 5 k, 10 k, but obviously saw him at Bates and stuff and and he was like, our senior year, he was the man. He won everything. So the reason I like Cam is because he was really good pre Super Shoes, was at a super high level, made Olympic finals.

Michael Hammond [00:32:47]: Now post Super Shoes with Super Shoes, he's still elite. I mean, he just ran I think it was last year or the year before he ran, 205 Canadian record, you know, all time marathon record. And he came out and said that if it weren't for the Super Shoes he's doing double thresholds. If it weren't for the Super Shoes, he almost certainly would not be able to do the sessions that he's doing. I love that perspective because, again, he's seen it before, he's trained like that before, he's trained this way after, he's really seen the effect of that. So I definitely think that's a massive factor because that's just something that we're starting to see with the super shoes is people not just running faster, not just you stick them on and you run X amount faster per mile, it's also that training effect. The people that are training in them a lot are starting we're starting to see that effect. They're just able to train harder, train longer, recover faster.

Michael Hammond [00:33:36]: So, yeah, heck yeah. If someone's if you've got them and you've, I would say don't go necessarily buy a brand new pair and wear them for the first time, I never I always say to not do that with any new pair of shoes. Don't go race in them or do a hard workout in them. Do like some strides in them or something beforehand. But, yeah, heck, yeah. If you've got a pair and you don't mind putting some miles on them just for one day to try this out, I would definitely recommend to do that. I would definitely only do, like, the you know, make sure you do your warm up and cool down in regular shoes. I would say just to not overwhelm the, those shoes and and to, like, make sure that you're comfortable, like, with your foot strike and stuff.

Michael Hammond [00:34:12]: I understand that sometimes a non, like, more forefoot strike can be a little bit uncomfortable in those sometimes. So I would say, yeah, I would say if you have them, go for it. If you don't, just even more so on that side of caution. Remember, if for anyone who's really willing to try this out, I I love the idea of someone listening to this just like giddy, like jumping in their seat being like, oh, heck yeah. I'm gonna go do a double threshold. Remember what I said about that morning session really isn't very hard. 5 by 2 ks, that's what Ingebrissen does. So let's say for someone listening to this, why don't you go try 3 by 2 k? 3 by 2 kilometers at, again, like marathon pace.

Michael Hammond [00:34:48]: So that's gonna be 6 kilometers, let's say 4 let's say something like 3 or 4 miles at, at marathon pace. That's not very hard when you think about it. That's not really a that's not a hard workout. Some people are going to run that and be like, that's it? That's that's all? That's kind of the point. That's really kind of the point here is that you're working that LT 1, you know, you know, or a little bit quicker. And then that afternoon, you come back, and that's where you really get into that lt 2. But, yeah, the super shoes, heck, yeah. If you've got them, you don't mind wearing them and putting putting a few extra miles on them.

Michael Hammond [00:35:17]: I know they don't last very long for their price. Then heck, yeah, it's definitely gonna benefit you.

Finn Melanson [00:35:22]: I'm just thinking about other possible alternatives to double thresholds. And for a lot of people out there, though, and maybe every runner, the limiting factor to doing more is just the wear and tear on your muscular skeletal system. So are there safer ways? Like, if you think about getting more benefits to building an aerobic engine, could you do your daily run and then just like hammer your Zwift trainer in the evening? And, you know, because the ground and pound isn't there, you're getting a huge fitness benefit. Like, how do you think about that?

Michael Hammond [00:35:55]: That would probably definitely be a more safer way of doing something like this. I mean, the the general idea that we talked about here is just accumulated fatigue. You know, the fact that you're going into that afternoon session a little bit fatigued and then you're having to do that threshold, which is gonna help to raise that threshold. That's the idea here. Yeah. You could definitely I I would say I always look at cross training as a supplemental tool as much as I as much as possible. What I mean by that is I never see cross training as a substitute. I see it as a supplement.

Michael Hammond [00:36:27]: So whenever we look at, like, cross training, you know, I don't necessarily try to perfectly mimic running workouts all the time, but this is definitely a case where from a threshold perspective, you definitely could. You could take that same type of idea of in that evening session doing, you know, 8 by 1 kilometer at l like approaching LT 2. You could take that same remember, lactate doesn't care if you're running, swimming, biking, or or hiking. It doesn't care. Right? It's gonna rise based on the effort. So, yeah, you could definitely do something like that. I do think that, I think what you said about, like, the musculoskeletal system is is important because that's that's probably one of the things that you'd see with this the most with people getting hurt is just jumping into it too quickly and and just the overall volume of it adding up too much without that adequate recovery. I think this is something that you definitely have to build up to.

Michael Hammond [00:37:19]: And again, I'll top it off by saying like most people almost certainly are never gonna do this consistently because of because of the challenge of recovering from it, because of the reality of people's schedules of of getting those 2 sessions in. But I would say that I I wouldn't necessarily see that as like a perfect substitute of of doing like a, like a different cardio session, you know, on the trainer or in the pool or something like that. But you could affect if you're if you're well trained at that, if you're a well trained cyclist, you know, you've done a good bit of cycling. If you're a well trained swimmer, you've done a good bit of swimming and you can get exact enough, there's the key here. You have to get pretty exact with the efforts and and your your pacing in order to get this stuff right. If you've never really biked much before and you're not in particularly good shape for you, relatively speaking, then and you go try to mimic this on the bike, I almost promise you, you're going to overdo it. You're going to overdo it because you're not well trained enough. You don't you don't know yourself on the bike enough.

Michael Hammond [00:38:19]: Just like with running, that's a huge problem with threshold running is that people don't know their own bodies well enough. They don't know how to measure their own efforts well enough in order to do something like this, which is why when you asked earlier about, like, the technology, there's part of me that wants to be like, heck, yeah. Go get yourself a lactate meter. But I understand that the reality of that is almost certainly, you know, that no one's gonna get one, no one's gonna have one. So you have to learn how to listen to your own body, measure your own effort accordingly. And I think that's important whether you're on the bike, you know, in the pool, out running, whatever you're doing. You have to learn how to measure that effort and remember that this stuff isn't really that crazy hard. You know, we're not ripping this stuff and throwing up afterward.

Michael Hammond [00:38:58]: If you do that, you're overrunning it, you're not doing it right. So you have to learn how to measure those efforts regardless of how you're doing it.

Finn Melanson [00:39:06]: This is more an observation, less a question, but you might wanna weigh in. The the sort of the primer for this episode was a Let's Run article that came I think it was Jonathan Galt who wrote it about this whole phenomenon of double thresholds and the Northern Arizona University athletes are prominently featured. And one thing that stuck out to me was when Mike Smith, their coach, started to introduce this, prescribe these workouts on a fairly frequent basis, there was a lot of the athletes, and these are some of the best athletes in the world, they reacted with fear and intimidation. But as soon as they experienced the workload themselves and kinda kinda experience like what you said earlier, like, the workouts themselves aren't as hard as other stand alone workouts, there was, sort of this newfound confidence in mental buy in. And I think one of the things that coaches and athletes have to work together on is sort of the perception of work in any given training block and how do we like if especially if an athlete comes into it thinking like I'm scared, I'm intimidated, I don't know if I can do this, the coach thinks based on your history, I think you can do it. What are your thoughts about like how double thresholds fit into that? Like would you give your athletes these this type of work simply to convert them to, like, a positive experience and knowing that they could do something like this in the future?

Michael Hammond [00:40:25]: I love that question because I like to look at people as people, not as robots. You know, I'll I'll often if I'm working with someone, I don't do a whole lot of 1 on 1 coaching nowadays, but if I do, something I'll tell an athlete is that the perfect physiological schedule for you from a from a absolute, like, scientist perspective may not necessarily be the best schedule for you because, again, we're human beings. You know, we're not robots that you plug in the inputs and you get the exact outputs. We're human beings. Those NAU athletes, again, these are guys that are freaky good. I mean, they've won the national cross country championship, I think, like, 4 or 5 years in a row now. These guys are freaky, freaky good, top level athletes, and yet, yeah, that's exactly how they responded. It was like, oh my god.

Michael Hammond [00:41:09]: That's a that's a crazy workout. I think in their case, I do think that the fact that they bought into it and the fact that they started doing it, I think effectively became not only we've we've been sitting here talking about like the physiological benefits of doing that, but I think it actually became a mental benefit for them, especially because they were the early movers of that. No college program was doing double threshold before NAU. And because they were the early movers, I do think there was a huge mental benefit to that in the fact that, I mean, I think it was Abdi Nour that they interviewed talking about it, US 5 ks Champ now, and he was saying that it felt really good just to do it. Not that the workout necessarily felt good. It was hard. It was a tough it was just a tough day. It was a long, you know, arduous day, but there was this huge confidence.

Michael Hammond [00:41:56]: You you used the word confidence. I think that was a big part of it for them was that it built up this massive amount of confidence like, wow, we're doing something hardcore that no other team is doing, no other team is willing to do, no other team is willing to make the sacrifice that we are. I think that that was really smart on Mike Smits. Stuff. I don't think he just thinks about the physiological benefits of training. I think he really looks at the, the mental benefits of this type of stuff. So when I'm working with somebody who's not an NAU superstar, you know, when I look at their workouts, I might have someone who doesn't handle anything like long all that well. Okay.

Michael Hammond [00:42:39]: What physiology would tell you let's say they're more speed oriented and they need to work on their endurance. You know, they've they've run some half decent, maybe 5 k's, but their marathon is is is struggling. Their half marathon is struggling. Perfect physiology would tell you, you need to go put this person in these these long tempo workouts. Let's give them some double threshold, baby. Let's let's go to the races with, like, long distance training. The problem is that's going to break down the athlete, probably physically, but it's certainly gonna break them down mentally and give them absolutely no confidence in themselves and in their training. I'm gonna work with that and give them maybe a little bit of speed work.

Michael Hammond [00:43:12]: Maybe we'll do a back to like, back to back workouts, probably almost certainly wouldn't do, like, double threshold or double workouts within a day, but maybe we'll do back to back workouts that one of them is one of them is a little bit more threshold and then one of them is more speed oriented. The way I would phrase that with an athlete is, like, hey. We're gonna do one for you and one for me. So you're you're gonna get your speed workout, but you gotta do my threshold workout first. So in general, I definitely think there's a big mental component to this stuff, just like I think there's generally a big mental component to most training, and I think that the confidence level that you get. There's definitely physiological benefits, like those are obvious and again, they've been measured by Marius Bakken and others, but I definitely think there's the mental benefit, the mental side is a huge component.

Finn Melanson [00:43:52]: Last question for you, and I guess first to make a comparison. So at least the way I understand it, if if 2 professional athletes are lining up for a race like the Boston Marathon and one has super shoes, the other doesn't, it's the running equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Right? Like, that that's not in super shoes is gonna be at a mechanical biomechanical disadvantage. Could you is it could you say the same thing about this double threshold phenomenon where if a if a pro is not incorporating this into their training routine that they may be at a disadvantage? Or are we just, like, mixing this notion that any particular workout could be, like, the crux of a training block?

Michael Hammond [00:44:34]: Yeah. I don't think you can quite make that comparison to Super Shoes because ultimately those are something that you put them on and you are almost certainly going to run a little bit faster. Double threshold is one of those things, and you mentioned that Let's Run article, we'll link that in the show notes. The, one of the guys mentioned, I can't remember who it was, but one of the guys that they mentioned talking about, he tried it because he was all excited about it and he's like, I want to run, hey, I want to be as fast as Jakob Ingebretsen. Why don't I do his training? And he realized that it didn't work for him. It just didn't it wasn't really in his skill set. It didn't complement his skill set to go do something like double threshold training. So I don't think it's that simple in terms of just being able to say the guy who does double threshold is gonna whoop up on the guy who doesn't because lots of great athletes over the years have never done this type of stuff, have never even bothered with this.

Michael Hammond [00:45:21]: I mean, doubles, people have done, you know, forever. But in terms of, like, specifically doing it this way, this very targeted model, I don't necessarily think it's that simple. I do think though from a like a general, a much more broad perspective, the thing that I mentioned this earlier, the thing I really like that it's doing is it's just better teaching people how to measure their efforts, like how to, you know, make a workout count without feeling like you have to rip it, without feeling like you have to go all out or anything like that. I think that's really the benefit. And I think that a lot of these people doing double threshold are probably I'm not going to say they're training easier than they were before doing double threshold because, man, some of these guys are putting in nearly 20 mile days, you know, AM across AM PM with this double threshold stuff, but they're measuring their efforts better. Their overall training is probably much smarter because they have to measure out those efforts, because they have to look at it from a totally different lens than if you just have this one session that you're hitting and then you you know you have like 48:48 hours before you have to go hard again in training. So I think that there's probably a much bigger benefit. It's not as simple as like guy doing double threshold is going to beat the other guy, but I do think that there's a huge benefit to just this training philosophy in general that I like and I think if someone is doing double threshold, you know, I'm going to at least look at them as someone who I think is probably doing their best to maximize their potential.

Michael Hammond [00:46:46]: Yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:46:47]: Well, Michael, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I personally learned a lot about this phenomenon of double thresholds and how to put it inside a proper context. I know the listeners did as well. Thank you so much for your time.

Michael Hammond [00:46:59]: Yeah. Thanks, Vin. It was a lot of fun.

Finn Melanson [00:47:15]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, I'll cast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests, and premier access to contests and giveaways, then subscribe to our newsletter by going to runnersconnect.netback/podcast. Until next time. Happy trading.