Pre 30/40 guided run

Listen to the background to the 30/40 run below or run the full 30/40 off-the-clock. This guide was scripted and recorded for the off-track 30/40 rather than the performance series. It remains just as relevant however in terms of understanding the context and dynamics of the run.

Steve Prefontaine and the 30/40 run

30-35 seconds faster pace, followed by float of 40-45 seconds at a moderately fast pace.

Warm up and cool down of 5-10 minutes each.

(Total session time 22 minutes, excluding warmup/cooldown)

This is a run based on Steve Prefontaine’s 30/40 training run. Pre continues to be an inspiration for runners inside and outside of the USA.

Pre joined the track team at the Unversity of Oregon where Bill Bowerman and Bill Dellinger were coaches. It was a few years prior to this that Bowerman had begun to experiment with making shoe soles out of a waffle-iron, an enterprise that later became Nike Inc.

Specialising in track runs up to 10k, Pre was the lead US runner on the Olympics team in 1972.

An inspirational figure, Pre met an untimely death at the age of 24 in a car accident. A reminder of the dark side of the force, It’s fair to say that Pre’s death left a void in the American running scene. But the measure of the man is that his legacy lives on, in a very spiritual way and so we approach this run with humility and a sense of those who came before us at the starting line.

And the run is the 30/40, developed by Bill Delinger at Oregon.

The 30/40 in the Oregon context is run on a track -- the first 200m run in 30s followed by a slower 200m in 40s, and you keep going until you can run no more. Steve Prefontaine kept it going for 18 laps (18 faster intervals, 18 slower intervals).

Another of Delingers runs was the 800/300 which was also actually run on the track and comprises a fast 800m followed by a slower 300m and it keeps on.

So we've come up with our own version of the 30/40 which focuses on the time component, given we're off-track. The first 30 seconds is going to be at a hard effort followed by 40 seconds recovery at a brisk medium hard effort. In keeping with the spirit of the workout run by Pre, we’ll run 18 intervals in total, making for a time of 21 minutes. We’ve added 5 seconds to each interval making it 35/45 to accomodate adjustment time for the pace changes given the relatively short interval length and the fact that it’s off-track, with a total runtime of 22 minutes 30 seconds. Bear in mind also that a warm-up easy run of at least 5-10 minutes beforehand is essential to doing this workout successfully.

To be clear, the 40s recovery part is often called a “float”, where the recovery is at tempo pace, keeping the body just below the lactate threshold before the next fast interval.

It’s a continuous run that aims to provide a challenging but rewarding workout.