VERY IMPORTANT! We’re back at Wythenshawe Park Athletics Track this Thursday!
The fitness focus (again this week) will be VO2 Max improvement – the key metric that determines performance over ‘middle’ distances and is best improved by efforts of 4-8 minutes
The technical focus will be short stride running – according to Brian Mac this can be an effective way to improve cross-country running speed.
Suggested Drills for the week
Straight Leg Run – landing on the ball of the foot and using the springiness in the calf and achilles to keep ground contact time short.
B-March
B-Skip
Short strides with a focus on driving the feet back and a short stride length.
Tuesday Session
10 minute warm-up
Then alternating group chase – split into two groups (fast and slower), fast sets off and runs for 3 mins at 3km race pace then starts walking back towards slower group, as soon as this happens the slower group start their interval, when the two groups meet the fast group set-off again… See this post for more details and a worked example.
10 minute cool-down
Thursday Session
10 mins easy warm up
4 minutes of run fast* for a count of 20 breaths, walk for 10 breaths (repeating this cycle for 4 minutes) THEN full recovery including some easy running.
* fast – this should be a reasonably smooth acceleration to your maximum pace. By the end of the 4 minutes it will feel EXTREMELY challenging.
REPEAT the above four times
10 mins Cool Down
For background see here.
Sunday Session
Minimum of 10 minutes warm up
Find a hill suitable for ideally 3 minutes of effort. Acclerate to maximum over the first few paces, maintain this pace for approx 10 breaths (should be around 20 seconds), walk back down the hill for 10 seconds, turn around and repeat the uphill. Do 8 reps. This will take around 4 minutes do a steady pace for around 6 minutes and aim to end up back at the bottom of the hill. REPEAT 3 TIMES (30 minutes total for this block).
This is a Tabata style workout, but done on a hill to help reduce over-striding tendencies.
At least 10 minutes cool down