Suprisingly, sprint training is superior to long, steady-state aerobic training in developing endurance. Here is an article about some research on cyclists who did 30 second sprints with 4 minutes of rest:
http://trainingscience.net/?page_id=389
The ones who did the 30 second sprints improved their endurance (time to exhaustion) more than the cyclists who did longer steady-state training. It may seem counter-intuitive, but sprint training is superior to long steady-state training for endurance.
Clearly the sprint training is superior for short events, but this research shows that sprint training is also superior for longer endurance events.
I like to do short courses for time and penalties or short straight sprints for training for whitewater slalom. Rather than doing longer loop courses, performing 30 second courses is more effective to develop endurance.
This isn't what I call speed training. Speed training is shorter courses- 5-15 seconds all-out, done at the beginning of a workout, not at the end.
30 second courses are what I call speed endurance training, where you go all-out and have complete rest between runs. I suggest that you have someone time you and count penalties on these runs so that there is feedback on how your run went and so that the focus goes up. Self-timing at this distance is not that accurate, so it's better to have someone on shore timing you.
Here is the link to the article about sprint training for endurance:
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