This week I will be using the Thursday session to look at everyone’s form and, with their consent, do some video analysis with a view to determining which technical areas to work on over the next few weeks. Additionally we will be doing some pacing challenges.
The fitness focus will be to improve VO2 Max; VO2 Max is the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete’s body is capable of using per minute – it is a very strong predictor of endurance race performance, particularly 5 and 10km races for well trained athletes. Improvements to VO2 Max can be elicited with efforts that are just below (lactate) threshold (the point most athletes can sustain for around an hour) and thus are relatively ‘easy’ to achieve.
Tuesday Session
10 minutes warm-up
4 TIMES: 8 minutes @ 10km race pace, 2 minutes super easy running as recovery
10 minutes cool-down
Thursday Session
5 minutes warm-up
Observed strides
400m @ self selected pace*
400m 10s faster than self selected pace
400m 10s slower than self selected pace
400m 10s faster than self selected pace
400m 10s slower than self selected pace
400m 10s faster than self selected pace
400m 10s slower than self selected pace
400m 10s faster than self selected pace
400m 10s slower than self selected pace
1km handicap race
5 minutes cool down
* Choose a pace you are confident at being able to improve by 10s on subsequent 400s, i.e., a pace you are confident is at least 25s per km slower than your fastest 400m rep time.
Sunday Session
Minimum of 10 minutes warm up
Find a hill suitable for at least two minutes of effort but ideally three, then run 6 to 8 intervals starting steady and accelerating to the maximum effort you feel possible by about half way up the hill, sustain that to the top. Walk down the hill until your breathing returns to normal, then jog down to the starting point.
You may notice that most weeks at the moment include a hill set – hill sets are great for; reducing overstriding, building strength and doing high effort aerobic work with low(er) injury risk.
At least 10 minutes cool down