Tuesday Workout of the Week: Quarters

Since today's meet between Newton North and Norwood has been postponed, let's talk quarters.

(Marathoners, for the sake of your full and complete recovery, you should stop reading right now.)

The very first track workout I ever ran was 4 x 440y on the Amherst High School cinder track. I was in 7th grade, and my coach threw me in with the 9th graders, who seemed very big and very fast, and wise in the ways of track workouts. I stuck with them for as long as I could, which was three quarters at about 75-77 seconds. My fourth one was 90 seconds, and I was done.

Several years later, as a junior, I remember running 12 quarters at 68-69s, with two minutes rest between them. It astonished me then, and I remember thinking how cool it was that I could run sub-70 over and over again like that, never wavering more than a second or two from the desired pace.

About 10 years later, when I was training for much longer races than a mile, I ran one interesting workout, in which I ran 25 x 400m (10K), all at about 74-75s pace. I left my watch running continuously during this workout, and started each 400m on a multiple of 2:00 (0:00, 2:00, 4:00,...) so I had approximately 45s rest in between.

As this miniscule sampling of workouts suggests, track sessions involving quarters are highly variable and can be constructed to serve many different ends. Eventually, almost everyone runs quarters. Sprinters run quarters; marathoners run quarters; milers run quarters like they were born to do it. freshman run quarters with a sense of awe and wonder; seniors run quarters with grim confidence and determination, as if to say, "yes -- these will hurt, but this is what we do... this is the price of admission to the club."

So why are 400m repeats so ubiquitous? Well, there's something primal about running once around the track fast. Imagine a bunch of kids hanging out on a summer afternoon... normal kids, maybe athletes, maybe not.. can't you imagine them saying to each other, "hey, I'll race you once around the track"?

Once around. One quarter mile. Well, actually about 2.34 meters short of a quarter mile on a standard 400m track, but in the old days we all ran on 440-yard tracks and a mile was four quarters, and that was that. Even now, it sounds a little pedantic to say "we're going to run 400m repeats today..." No, let's run quarters. I like the sound of that better.

(When I first started at Newton North, the distance runners told a story about a particular workout that involved longer repeats of some sort, and one of the runners -- I think it was Tyler Newman -- asked Coach Blackburn, "Hey coach, how about a quick water?" Without hesitation, Coach responded, "Ok, let's do a quick quarter," and off they went. This is one of many stories whose moral is that you should be careful of attempting to bargain with the person who holds the stopwatch...)

. . .

Ok, so let's stop reminiscing about the old days and get down to business. How should we incorporate quarters into training for H.S distance runners?

While it is possible to construct a strength workout (a.k.a, aerobic capacity workout) out of quarters, it's a little bit inefficient. Once in a while, it's an interesting change to run many repeat quarters at 3k-5k pace with very little rest, but eventually you realize that the rest just kind of gets in the way, and if your goal is strength, it's more convenient to run repeat 800s, 1000s, or 1200s.

So let's simplify the situation and say that when we run quarters we'll run them fairly fast - either at 1M race pace, or perhaps much faster, when we are far along in the season and we want to do race-specific preparation.

A deceptively simple workout is the classic 8-10 x 400m @ 1M race pace or a little faster with 2 minutes rest in between. Bannister ran this workout again and again during his lunch hours as he was preparing for his attempt at a sub-4:00 mile. Actually, early in his preparations he ran this workout, but ran his quarters slower, averaging 63-65 seconds, and worked down to averaging 58-59 seconds. The workout thus constructed had two important goals: make the runner efficient and comfortable at the goal race pace, and promote physiological adaptation to the strain that this pace puts on the buffering capacity of the working muscles. The pace is faster than maximum aerobic capacity (it's about 110-115% of V02 max), and the rest is not sufficient to fully recover; thus, as the workout progresses, there is a build-up of metabolic by-products that makes it harder and harder to hold the pace. However, the rest does allow enough recovery to run double or triple the race distance in the workout. When giving this workout, I prefer to give fewer intervals, so that there is absolutely no let-up in the pace; in fact, I want the volume to be such that the athlete can make the last quarter the fastest. Ideally, the workout prepares the athlete to run the pace and finish strong.

For younger runners like my former seventh-grade self, fewer quarters is appropriate. For older runners with a lot of experience, more quarters can be appropriate. I have certainly seen high school runners run 12 x 400m or even 16 x 400m and not fall apart. College runners and those who have read "Once a Runner" will be laughing at me, thinking that 12 or 16 quarters is nothing. Fine. Laugh if you want. Every athlete is different.

Quarters can also be a way of spicing up strength-oriented workouts by adding some quick running in with longer, slower-paced runs. For example, I sometimes finish a strength-oriented workout with 2 x 400m or even 4 x 400m. A good transitional workout (transition from strength to more race-like speed) is 4 x 800m + 4 x 400m.

And later still, at the height of the competitive season, we might start running fewer quarters but run them much faster, say at 800m race pace, but it's still April so let's leave those workouts for another day.