Updated August 14, 2025 06:18AM
One-Hour Workout: Push Your Engine, Then Recover
This session is designed as one that lets you push your engine, but also includes enough recovery to let you push later in the week.
Triathletes complete a One-Hour Workout focused on very fast efforts with easy recovery between to build their run speed. (Photo: Getty Images)
This week’s one-hour workout comes from coach Sue Sotir of Breakthrough Performance Coaching in Ipswich, Mass. “Running requires enough time to be durable and to have the engine to support your goals, and rewards economical and efficient movements that require coordinated muscular activations – but it also punishes you if you overdo any of the work.”
This session is designed as one that lets you push your engine, but also includes enough recovery to be able to keep pushing that engine appropriately during other parts of the week. You’ll open with an easy 15 minutes, focusing on cadence, then progress to a set that alternates between tempo efforts and 3o-second bursts of speed. The key to pulling off this workout is to make the easy efforts truly easy – so when you see the word “easy” in the instructions, scale way back to an effort where you can hold a conversation. Anything harder than that is not an “easy” effort.
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One-Hour Workout: Push your engine, then recover
Warm-up
15 min warm up, focus on cadence first
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Main set
3 x 30 sec stride, 90 sec easy (strides are an acceleration from your steady pace to a fast, smooth effort)
10 min build over the first 5 min to tempo/10K effort, hold for 5 min at 10k effort, then right into
3 x (30 sec FAST, 30 sec easy or walk)
5 min easy effort
10 min all 10 min tempo/10K effort, again, right into
3 x (:30 FAST, :30 easy or walk)
Cool-down
Easy effort to round out the hour, re-focusing on cadence and adding attention to posture