how often should i do interval training per week

Q: How often should i do interval training per week?

A: Funnily enough, it depends!

Firstly it depends what you are talking about. Some of my longer ‘slow’ runs have periods when i go from one zone into another (intensive endurance). That is interval training. So if the slow runs can be intervals then so too can the faster ones. ALL your training, pretty much, can be interval based.

So you were asking the wrong question 😉

But don’t worry I’ll try and be helpful! Read on.

I’m assuming that you are talking about ‘fast’ intervals and/or faster than race pace intervals (again a caveat here would be ‘it depends’ also on your target distance and level of fitness and fatigue) but let’s assume it’s 5k – a not unreasonable assumption considering the name of the site you have just come to.

A: “Twice”. Two faster than race pace sessions a week.

You’ll need time to recover form these sessions as they will be hard

If you are coming up to a race then you will be doing fast sessions, focussing on your speed work. But if the race is days away you will also be doing intervals to maintain your speed and fitness but allowing more time to recover between effort periods so that your do not become too fatigued.

So, “2 times” is a good answer to the general question “how often should i do interval training per week?”