Breaking the threshold "Bread and Butter"

Hey everyone,

My name is Ian Torchia and I am a professional cross-country skier based out of Stratton Mountain, Vermont, training and racing towards my goal of the 2022 Olympics. In my first blog with PNG, I went into the basics of marathon training and terminology related to the plan we will execute in pursuit of a half-marathon race. One of the key workouts, aka the “bread and butter” of the training plan will be a threshold session that will help improve our efficiency running at half marathon pace. This session should be incorporated after an easy day of medium distance low intensity running or cross-training. The workout runs as follows:

1. 20-25 minutes of easy running to warm up with drills and strides as needed to loosen up your body.
2. 45 minutes of threshold running working from marathon pace to goal half-marathon pace in the last 10 minutes. Your effort should be about 80-90% of maximum effort and should feel like a “fast float”. If you wear a heart rate monitor, you should pin your heart rate a sustainable 85% of your heart rate max. At the end of the 45 minutes, you should feel like you could run 15 more minutes at that pace if you wanted to. If you incorporate hills into the route, remember that your effort should remain constant, therefore your pace will rise and fall with the terrain. 
3. 20 minutes of easy running cooldown. Make sure to stretch well after the session and add in a 15-20 minute core workout if you are feeling up to it. 

This workout should be repeated most weeks and can be modified to fit energy levels with either 20-30 minutes of threshold running if feeling tired or up to 1 hour of harder running if feeling good. 

Happy training!

Ian Torchia