One-Hour Workout: A Run Workout From The World’s Top Long Course Coach

There’s only one tri coach in the world who’s guided two athletes to the Ironman World Championship crown on the same day—Dan Lorang. Although he has a relatively low profile in the U.S., Lorang is a high performance coach with an eye for detail, a huge passion for the sport, and a quiet drive that has helped Jan Frodeno earn three Kona titles and led Anne Haug to her first win last year.

For this week’s one-hour workout, we’re featuring one of Lorang’s favorite run workouts, which aligns with many of the top training tips he gave Triathlete last week. Lorang advocates “stressing less” and avoiding high-intensity workouts if/when there is already stress in other areas of your life. He also advises “going up”—that is, doing short uphill runs to train your VO2max instead of flat high-intensity runs: “The load for your bones is less high and the effect for your VO2max bigger,” he said—and this is a  key part of this run workout.

Begin with five minutes of mobilization, which could include any type of exercise that opens up your joints and promotes easy, fluid movement when you begin working out. The mobility work featured in this at-home strength workout is a great example. You’ll then do a 10-minute easy warm-up run, all smooth and steady pace, before doing 10 minutes of run drills. The drills featured in this video are good if you’re looking for suggestions.

In order to prepare your body for the main set, there’s a prep set of three progressive runs (or strides) of 60m, 80m, and 100m—taking one-minute recovery between each. These should be short, sharp accelerations to get your legs ready to hit higher intensities in the main set.

The main set includes five rounds of 30-second intervals, five rounds of 45-second intervals, and another five rounds of 30-second intervals, all run up hill at VO2max intensity (think 10/10 RPE). There’s one minute of recovery between each interval and four minutes of recovery between each set to ensure the quality of the work remains high—that is, you’re able to keep working hard. So, it should look like this: 30-second effort, one-minute recovery, 30-second effort, one-minute recovery…for five rounds, and then take four minutes of recovery before beginning the 45-second intervals.

Wrap it up with a 10-minute cool down.

One-Hour Workout: A Run Workout from the World’s Top Long Course Coach

Warm-up

5 min. mobilization

10 min warm-up run, steady pace
10 min. running drills

3 x strides as: 60m, 80m, 100m progressive runs with 1 min. recovery between each

Main Set

5 x 30-sec. uphill run @ VO2max intensity (10/10 RPE), 1 min. recovery between each
4 min. recovery
5 x 45-sec. uphill run @ VO2max intensity (10/10 RPE), 1 min. recovery between each
4 min. recovery
5 x 30-sec. uphill run @ VO2max intensity (10/10 RPE), 1 min. recovery between each
4 min. recovery

Cooldown

10 min. cool-down