IMPORTANT:
Thursday’s training for the next 4 weeks (1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd of September) will be on William Scholes’ field. All other sessions will be as normal and we will return to meeting at the track on 29th September.
The location to meet is the car park ‘behind’ Gatley Hill House off Church Road (SK8 4HY) and the what3words link is https://w3w.co/punchy.runs.roof – I would recommend trail shoes or spikes unless the weather continues to be very dry.
The fitness focus will be VO2 Max improvement – the key metric that determines performance over ‘middle’ distances and is best improved by efforts of 5-8 minutes
The technical foci will be; Grass Running, Tight Turns, Uphill, Downhill and Technical Terrain (everything!!).
Suggested Drills for the week
Step-Ups
Lunge progression
A-March to A-Skip to A-Run (A-Run is A-skip but with 2 steps between each skip; so you end up changing leg for each skip)
Tight turns (gradually accelerate to 90% sprint, decelerate to cone, 180 turn, accelerate to 90% sprint, decelerate to starting point)
Tuesday Session
10 minutes easy running
10 minutes @ 10km race pace, 5 minutes recovery pace, 15 minutes @ 10km race pace, 5 minutes recovery pace, 10 minutes @ 10km race pace
5 minutes cool down
Thursday Session
5 minutes easy
Step-Ups
Lunge progression
A-March to A-Skip to A-Run (A-Run is A-skip but with 2 steps between each skip; so you end up changing leg for each skip)
Tight turns (gradually accelerate to 90% sprint, decelerate to cone, 180 turn, accelerate to 90% sprint, decelerate to starting point)
Then we will be doing reps of a fairly technical loop around the field aiming to make ‘best pace’ given the terrain and length of the loop. If you are unable to make the Scholes’ session then 5x 1km (see previous posts) is a good alternative.
5 minutes easy
Sunday Session
Long* Run with a fast (10km race pace) finish
*Long is relative to what you have been doing recently; no more than 20% longer than any run you’ve done in the past 4 weeks.
Manchester Harriers and Athletics Club 