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PA4 ways runners unintentionally ruin their threshold training without even realising it.
1. You mix anaerobic speed and threshold in the same session. Example: 6 × 200 fast, then 5 × 6 minutes threshold. The early lactate spike slows your threshold pace even though the effort stays the same.
2. You place the anaerobic day within 24 hours of threshold. Example: hard 400s Tuesday night, threshold Wednesday morning. Residual lactate and neuromuscular fatigue force a slower threshold for the same metabolic cost.
3. You treat threshold like a continuous effort when it should be broken into reps.
Threshold is most effective when you break it up (like 5 × 6 minutes), because you can run faster at the same metabolic cost. But if you come into the session already fatigued, you lose that advantage, so you can’t access the faster pace that broken threshold allows.
4. Fatigue forces you to run threshold slower just to stay at the right intensity.
When the metabolic cost is already high from earlier speed work, you can’t run your normal threshold pace without going above threshold. So you end up running slower for the same cost, which defeats the purpose of doing broken threshold reps in the first place.
If you want the exact weekly structure that protects your threshold and helps you actually get faster, comment “PLAN” and I’ll send it to you.
@pacetheory
