Veronique Billat's 30-30 Workout For The Aged!

I thought I would give the broken old chassis a bit of a tougher test this week. You know, kick the tires, do a few donuts, take a couple turns too fast.....just see what little is left in this Chevette....
I started and finished the week with two easy 12K runs. I MAY try to push this out to 13, but that will be the upper limit. Those runs that approach an hour and a half just make everything shimmy and shake just a bit. Also, one would have been plenty thank you very much. That is about all I think I can stand on the endurance development front...
On thursday I did 9K with 4 repeat cruise intervals of 6 minutes with 2 minute recoveries. I did these at what feels like 10K race pace. Wasn't too sore after that one....
On Tuesday, I did a Billat 30-30 workout. Now Veronique Billat, the ingenious French Physiologist, created this workout to help newbies, those undertrained, and the elderly (I added that group) dramatically increase their Vo2 max and running economy, bye up to 10%, in as little as 6 to 8 weeks with her workout protocol. It basically involves alternating 30 second sprints with 30 second jogs till you drop dead (that's why I wear my road ID so they can get the body to deb). Actually she recommends 16-24 repeats as the norm. The hard intervals stop (initially) before too great a level of fatigue occurs, and the floats are short enough that you spend the entire workout generally in a Vo2 maximizing zone....so that for 8 minutes of sprinting you get 16 minutes of time spent in that Vo2 max zone allowing substantial gains in speed, economy, and fitness elevation. So, after a good 3K warmup, I set about the workout. The initial sprints were fairly easy, but you could tell that the recoveries were inadequate. The first 8 went bye fairly comfortably. The next 4 or so left you pretty gassed during the recovery. The last 4, especially the last 2, gave me a bit of that "gee, why do I sort of feel like I could puke" sensation, so I stopped at 16 total reps. I could have probably added 2 more to failure, but then I would not have wanted to repeat the workout at a later date, and secondly, the greatest danger for the Chevette is when I get very tired the chassis is at greatest risk of catastrophic failure and some crazy injury is lurking within a few steps.....
So Frank and Ernie, at our combined age of 185 with the limits of what are chassis will tolerate, This is what our best week might look like in our quest to get a bit of our speed back safely, and to be able to hold some sort of shitty race pace for a half hour to an hour.....one long run approaching an hour and a half max, one forty five minute recovery run, and two runs approaching an hour where we do one 30-30 workout for 16 minutes or so, and another where we do 4 repeats of 5 or 6 minutes somewhere in the netherworld of 5K to 10K pace. That would give us a maximum of 4:15 of runnng complemented bye whatever cross training you like, with about 36-40 minutes of intensity to try and gain back some speed and efficiency.....I think that is about all we probably should expect to get as this endeavor gets us closer to having the Chevette sent to the crusher.....