[MartinT]

For those of us who train 6-10 hours per week: Is there any benefit in splitting the z3-interval workout into two sessions in one day (similar to the so-called Norwegian model of “double threshold”)? Say, 4x8minutes in the morning and 8×3 minutes in the evening.

[Scott Johnston]

Martin, thanks for writing in with your great question.  It’s not a simple one to answer though so much on the individual athlete that the best I can tell you is you’ll need to try it and see if it works for you.  In theory, I don’t see anything wrong with stacking 2 Z3 workouts into a day. The benefit is that you can have slow speed and high speed endurance training because training at 3mMol/L in each of these workouts will result in quite different speeds on these repetitions.  The only recommendation I might make in your example is to put the shorter faster workout in the morning with the longer somewhat slower eight minute repetitions in the afternoon/evening.

I hope this helps,

Scott

[MartinT]

Thank you for your kind reply, and also thank you for the very helpful and inspiring books, articles, and podcasts! I am well underway to curing my ADS, and feel way better than before.

A semi-related question: It seems that I am a fast twitch-dominant runner. In your article, you write that a z4 workout should be 10x2min rather than the typical 4x5min for the fast twitch athlete. Would there be similar prescriptions for z3 intervals for the fast twitch athlete? The “Big Vert”-plan for example suggests 3x10min and 3x20min.

[Author]

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