Specific Training of Olympic 1500m Champion Taoufik Makhloufi
Under 15 people have broken 3:29.00 for 1500m and Algerian Olympic 1500m Champion Taoufik Makhloufi is one of them. He also has a 1:42.61 800m to his name, as well as 2:13.08 1000m (5th fastest all time).
Sweat Elite Co-Founder, Matt Fox was lucky enough to have a discussion with Makhloufi in Stockholm, Sweden in 2012 about his training. This was just a few months before he convincingly won the 1500m Olympic Final in London.
“If you think about how long a 1500m race lasts for (lets say 3 minutes and 40 seconds), then why are we running 90 minutes at a slow pace? Does it really do anything for a middle distance race? There seems to be a common weekly mileage of between 80 and 100 miles a week. Is it necessary to run that amount for a middle distance race?”
The quote above is from Evan Scully, Makhloufi physiotherapist for several years who travelled with him whilst training and competing. You can find Evan’s post featuring Makhloufi’s training here, in which we will reference in this post as well.
Main points:
- Mileage would be around 85-95km/week in race preparation period and race period (less in the week of an important race) and around 100km/week in the base period. When asked what his milage was like (in 2012), he wasn’t sure as didn’t count it at all or didn’t find it important to know what the week volume calculated to.
- Longest run between October-Jan is 60mins, Feb-April is 70mins, May-June is back to 60mins and from June through the racing season, just 45mins. These runs are just jogging, very slowly, often as slow as 6min/km!
- Emphasis was purely on quality and at least once, often twice a week in the transition-racing period (March-June) he would do interval workouts at 800m-1500m race pace (or at least parts of the workouts were at this race pace).
- Lots of strides: 3-5 days a week after 30-45min runs.
- 2 Strength and Conditioning workouts per week – lifting heavy and often just a few repetitions.
- No tempo/threshold running. No heart rate, controlled running.
- Fartlek workouts consistently in the program weekly from Feb-May and then these were phased out. Some example fartlek workouts below.
- Hill sprints are a key workout throughout the year. Makhloufi had completed a workout of 10x100m hill sprints 1 week before the 800m in Stockholm in which he said he does them “close to max effort” with a jog back recovery. These workouts are every single week in the base and transitions period (October-June) and then occasionally in racing period; perhaps once every 3 weeks or so.
- The day before every session hard workout was strength and conditioning work followed by 100m reps/strides focusing on form. Thee weren’t max effort 100m’s – closer to 90% of max speed.
- Flexiblity (stretching) is very important to Makhloufi. He told us this himself and Evan mentions the same thing on his blog post.
- Regular massages, 3-4 week often up to 2 hours in duration.
In summary, we can say that long runs and tempos/threshold runs are not a part of Makhloufi’s training. Fartlek is and this is important for endurance building from around Feb to May.
Speed endurance workouts (all or part of the workout at race pace), hill sprints, strides and weight training are the key to Makhloufi’s training.
Example Fartlek workouts:
- 10 x (2mins hard, 2mins rest) – a workout completed 3 weeks before the meeting in Stockholm and his “last fartlek workout of the year – mid June.
- 4 x (4mins hard, 2mins rest, 2mins hard, 2mins rest)
- 15 x (1min hard, 1min rest)
- 20 x (30sec hard, 30 sec rest)
Example Speed Endurance workouts:
- 4x600m (1:30s), 4x500m (1:15s), 5x400m (59 down to 55), 4x150m (17s), 300m in 35, 1x250m in 30. It’s unclear what the recoveries in this workout were from Evan’s blog post, but you can imagine it would be 1-2mins between reps and perhaps a little more between sets. This workout starts at around what you would imagine his 3km pace to be (or slightly faster), puts some fatigue into his legs and then drops down to under 800m pace in the final reps.
- 15x300m in 45sec with 50sec rest, broken into 3 sets of 5.
Hill Workouts – Speed Work:
- Makhloufi mentioned to me that he’d never run over 200m on hill repeats and the workouts are normally 100m’s or 150m’s repeats. This is also reflected on Evan’s blog post.
- Common workouts: 10-15x100m hill sprints with a 1:15 jog back recovery. Sometimes broken up into sets of 5. Another common one was 150m repeats, 7-8 of them.
Example Race Pace Workouts (Speed):
- 800m (10min rest) 500m (4mins rest) 400m (2mins rest) 300m. You can watch this famous workout completed on video here in which Makhloufi ran the 800m in 1.44, 500 in 64.7, 400m in 52.7 and the 300m 39.2. “This session didn’t come easy. He was hurting. When the session finished, he couldn’t move for around 30 minutes.” – Evan Scully.
- 1200m (12min rest) 600m (2.5min rest) 600m. Makhloufi ran this workout 10 days before his 2:13.08 1000m PB and ran the 1200m in 2:44.6 and 600s in 1:22.7 and 1:23.6. That 1200m is right on 1500m world record pace and yes, if you’ve done your math, is splitting under 1:50 for 800m on the way.
- 3 sets of (250m, 200m, 150m) with 2mins rest between reps and 4mins between sets. You would imagine these would be done under his 800m race pace: 31-32sec / 24-25sec / 17-18sec is our guess.
- 2 sets of (4x250m) in 32 seconds with 75seconds between reps and 6mins between sets.
- 3 sets of (3×300) in 39sec average. Recovery 60-75sec between reps and 3-4mins between sets.
- 500m + 500m + 200m. Recovery isn’t clear with this workout, but times are 62-63 for the 500ms and 23 for the 200m.
- 3 sets of (3x500m) in 69sec (55.2sec through 400m) with 2mins rest between reps and 8mins rest between sets. – 1500m pace workout
- 2 sets of (4x250m) in 32sec (25.6 200m pace) with 1:15 rest between reps and 6mins between sets. – 800m pace workout
As you can see, these workouts are incredibly intense and very specific to racing.
An example training week for Makhloufi (from May-June), preparing to race. In the base period it’s similar in terms of weekly structure, but some of the 100m strides would be uphill, fartlek / longer track workouts would replace the race specific days and long run would be 60-70mins.
Monday
AM 30min jog, gym, 100m strides
PM 45mins easy
Tuesday
AM 30mins easy + 6 strides
PM Race Specific Workout @ 1500m pace
Wednesday
AM Rest
PM 40min jog
Thursday
AM 30min easy, drills, gym
PM 40mins easy + 100m strides
Friday
AM 30mins easy + 6 strides
PM Race Specific Workout @ 800m pace
Saturday
AM 40min easy + strides
PM Rest
Sunday
AM 50min easy
PM Rest
