How Much Rest Should I Take During Vo2 Max Workouts

Audio Transcript

Sinead: Today, we have a really great question from Ronnie.

Ronnie heard through the grape vine, that you need to be getting 30 seconds for every 200 meters you run. If you’re doing a 400 meter repeat, you’re getting a minute of recovery. If you’re doing 800, you’re getting two minutes, and so on. This isn’t too far off.

At Runners Connect, we believe in a 1:1 ratio for recovery during V02 Max sessions. If you’re doing 800 meters in three minutes, you want to take three minutes rest.

While this might seem like a lot of recovery, this is what you need when you’re doing your intervals at the intensity that you are doing them at.

This intensity is about 80 to 95% of your V02 Max. This is best for helping you to practice running at your V02 Max and consequently increase your V02 Max.

Ronnie, you were talking about 1600 meter repeats. This is a bit too long for V02 Max sessions. The ideal length for repeats in a V02 Max session is typically about three minutes long.

This is because it takes about one to two minutes to reach your V02 Max. You only need to stress it for one to minutes. Olympic coach, Jack Daniels, who you might be familiar with, advises his runners to train only at the minimal pace they need, to obtain the benefits they want.

This sounds pretty good to me. I don’t know about you, but I typically don’t like to do more work than I have to.

Jack Daniels believes that you should do the bare minimum to get the benefits and not exceed that. This means if 80% of your V02 Max is the minimum you need to increase your V02 Max, then you probably don’t need to run at 90 to 100% of your V02 Max for intervals.

This is Jack Daniel’s philosophy and the philosophy of Runners Connect and a lot of different coaches around the world.

By doing it like this, you will also be able to put more into your general mileage and other types of running workouts.

You’ll also recover faster and do V02 workouts more often and consistently to increase your V02 Max. That’s one method of recovery for V02 Max workouts.

The 1:1 ratio is a common method used amongst runners. You don’t want to exceed a three-minute interval in a V02 Max workout, because you’ll reach your V02 Max within one to two minutes. It’s not necessary.

When it comes to recovery in V02 Max workouts, there is another method that is commonly used, and that is the quick jog rest method. We use this at Runners Connect and this includes training for shorter events, like the 5K and 10K which requires a blend of both speed and endurance.

Within this method, you’re going to reduce the intensity of the interval itself and increase the intensity of the recovery.

In this instance, by not fully recovering and jogging quickly between repeats, you still improve your ability to run at race pace, but you ensure that you have the aerobic strength and support to maintain goal pace on race day.

This is what gives you the speed endurance required for distances like the 5K and 10K. For instance, where a runner might have done 6 by 800 meters, with a three minute recovery between each, and doing those intervals of three minutes for 800 meters, a better workout to prepare specifically for the 5K would be something like 6 by 800 meters at goal 5K race pace, with a short jog rest at 85% of marathon pace.

For example, for a 20 minute 5K runner, this would look like 6 by 800 meters at 310 to 315, with about 200 meters jog between. This 200 meter jog would be for a 20 minute 5K. This would be at about 830 pace which would be 85% of their marathon pace.

I know this sounds complicated but what this ensures that you are decreasing the intensity of the interval and slightly increasing the intensity of the jog recovery between.

Again, what it does is teach your body to run a 5K pace with as little pace as possible.

The two methods for recovery in V02 Max sessions are the 1:1 ratio in which you are still keeping the intensity and the interval, and then giving yourself equal recovery, and then the quick jog rest method which requires you to decrease the intensity of the interval a little bit, but then increase the intensity of the jog recovery.

Both help to pretty much produce the same results and that is to increase your V02 Max and increase your ability to sustain a speed for a given amount of time.

I hope that helps you out Ronnie, and I hope that helps our listeners out today. That was a fantastic question and something that we get quite often at Runners Connect.

People are very interested in V02 Max and how to use their V02 Max as a reference for paces in their training.

Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. If you haven’t already, consider heading on over to iTunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review. This help us to move up a little bit in iTunes and reach more runners like yourself, and hopefully give them something to use in their own training.

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Thanks for listening and have a great day.