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The main fitness focus will be work on negative splits!

The technical focus will be running with a short stride (and therefore high cadence).

Strength Exercises for the week

All exercises should be body weight variants only unless an S&C coach (can be me) has agreed you have perfect form. Good examples of form can be found on https://www.muscleandstrength.com/exercises

Squat progressions, Turkish Get-Up, Cobra – we’re working on the Turkish Get-Up for a while since it is a complex but extremely useful exercise

Suggested Drills for the week

B-Progression (B-March, B-Skip, B-Run)

Strides while keeping a high cadence

Tuesday Session

No warm up!

Start at an easy pace, every km (or 1.2km if on the track) get faster – try and use your judgement to be unable to get any faster by the time you get to approx 50 minutes of running.

10 minutes of easy running to cool down

Thursday Session

10 mins easy warm up – include the suggested drills for the week

2 or 3 REPS of:

1600m effort as 800m @ roughly 5km pace and then 800m 5-10 seconds faster then 400 easy to recover

10 minutes strength work

5 mins cool down

Weekend 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.

The fitness focus will be tapering for the next XC of the season.

The technical focus will be practising all the drills with a view to having a good race warm-up routine.

Strength Exercises for the week

All exercises should be body weight variants only unless an S&C coach (can be me) has agreed you have perfect form. Good examples of form can be found on https://www.muscleandstrength.com/exercises

Side Plank with hip dip, Supine Toe Tap (not on exercise DB; lie on front raise one leg, tap toe on floor and raise leg again do some reps then change legs), Bird Dog

Suggested Drills for the week

Leg swings

Straight Leg Running

A-March to A-Skip progression

B-March to B-Skip progression

High Heels drill

Side stepping

Carioca

Strides whilst imaging a balloon attached to your head.

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

4x 6 minutes @ 5km pace with 4 minute recoveries.

10 minute cool-down

Thursday Session

10 mins easy warm up including (extra) drills

Some 400s @ 10km race pace – lots of recovery

10 mins Cool Down

Weekend Session

Cross-country or 9km at race pace in a muddy field.

The fitness focus 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 – this should help to improve pace over ‘softer ground’ like that which we encountered yesterday!

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 keep repeating the following until it is time to cool down:

3 minutes at 5km race pace

2 minutes at steady pace

2 minutes at 5km race pace

1 minutes steady

1 minute at 5km race pace

3 minutes easy then repeat…

10 minute cool-down

This session has been shown to allow athletes to do an extended amount of hard effort when compared to a session with fixed duration intervals of 5km race pace

Thursday Session

10 mins easy warm up – include the suggested drills for the week

FOUR TIMES: 800m as 200m maximum effort then 600m 5km pace minus 5 seconds per km, then recover fully (2 to 3 minutes)

5 minutes easy running to cool down

Strength Work

This is a tough set; if you want to know why you’re doing it I have written some details here.

Weekend Session

Minimum of 10 minutes warm up

Do a long run (distance will be up to you but this should be your longest run of the week) but aim to do the last third at the pace you would normally race the distance of your long run e.g. if your long run is 21km then the last 7km should be run at half marathon pace.

This week we’re working at well over LT2 (Second Lactate Threshold)/Maximum Lactate Steady State (MLSS) – these workouts are hard but can very quickly build ‘top end’ fitness for newer athletes and are helpful for experienced athletes to maintain fitness.

For technique we’ll be working on arm drive – and trying to remember to bring arm drive into the final few hundred meters of each effort.

Strength and Conditioning

All exercises should be body weight variants only unless an S&C coach (can be me) has agreed you have perfect form. Good examples of form can be found on https://www.muscleandstrength.com/exercises

Side Plank with hip dip, Supine Toe Tap (not on exercise DB; lie on front raise one leg, tap toe on floor and raise leg again do some reps then change legs), Bird Dog

Suggested Drills for the week

A-Progression (A-March, A-Skip, A-Run)

A-Progression (A-March, A-Skip, A-Run) with focus on arm drive

Strides while focusing on the individual aspects of arm drive in each of 4 sets of strides; keeping elbow joint at 90 degrees, keeping the arm in the correct plane, getting a full arm drive and keeping the shoulders relaxed.

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

7 x 3 minutes at somewhere between mile race pace and 3km race pace with 2-3 minutes between efforts

10 minute cool-down

Thursday Session

Warm-Up

FOUR TIMES: 800m faster than 5km pace, 200 easy, 200 max then recovery (easy or walking/stretching)

Cool down

Weekend Session

Do a long run (distance will be up to you but this should be your longest run of the week) on a course that has rolling hills – put in max effort up the hills (assuming its reasonably local and the hills are less than 5 minutes to climb).

This week we will be starting a bit more work at pace and improving VO2 Max since cross country season will soon be upon us. We’re repeating the 200s set so a few more people get to ‘enjoy’ it!

For our technical goal we will be aiming to use a nice, strong arm drive.

Suggested Drills for the week

A-Progression (A-March, A-Skip, A-Run)

A-Progression (A-March, A-Skip, A-Run) with focus on arm drive

Strides while focusing on the individual aspects of arm drive in each of 4 sets of strides; keeping elbow joint at 90 degrees, keeping the arm in the correct plane, getting a full arm drive and keeping the shoulders relaxed.

Tuesday Session

10 minutes 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.

Thursday Session

20 mins easy warm up – include the suggested drills for the week

The track will be set with cones a short distance (approx 15 seconds walk) from the 200m and start/finish points. Accelerate to a max effort between the 200m points on the track. When you get to either the 200m or start/finish point the slow down and stop, walk to the cone and back and then do the next 200m hard effort. If done correctly you should get about 30 seconds hard effort and 30 seconds walking.

You will do the above for 5 minutes, then take an extended break (2 minutes) then repeat…

5 mins cool down

Weekend Session

Minimum of 10 minutes warm up

Do a long run (distance will be up to you but this should be your longest run of the week) but every 1km do a stride (accelerate to 90% of sprint speed, hold it for 10 breaths or approx 20 seconds, then decelerate).