Category: News

Remember no session on Thursday due to Sizzler

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

SALE SIZZLER!

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).

This week our technical focus is on foot landing; ensuring your foot lands close to under your center of mass and that your knee is flexing as your foot lands.

Our fitness focus is still 5km race pace and the Thursday session focuses on lactate clearance.

Suggested Drills for the week

Walking Lunges – remember to keep your leading knee behind your leading toes and your trailing knee should not quite touch the ground.

Straight Legged Run or ‘claw’ – keep your leg straight, driving with your glute muscles and lightly tapping the ground with the ball of your foot.

Jog on the spot building to a very high cadence then lean (from the ankle) slightly forward until you naturally start running.

Short (30m build, 30m @90%, 30m decelerate) strides in back-and-forth pairs; on each pair – focus on keeping a short stride length (and high cadence) in the first stride of each pair and then driving back with the feet on the second stride in each pair.

Tuesday Session

10 minutes easy running

REPEAT: 10 minutes @ 10km race pace, 5 minutes recovery pace

5 minutes cool down

Thursday Session

5 Minutes easy running

Drills and Strides

TWO TIMES: 4x400m @3km race pace with 400m recovery @ Half Marathon Pace – total of 3200m for each of the two reps – total of 6400m for this section.

5 minutes easy running to cool down

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

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. Tuesday’s workout will be on how long we can maintain that state for.

For technique we’ll be working on keeping a nice short stride.

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

We will be doing split squats and then jump split squats / lunges

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

Warm-Up

TWO TIMES: 20 minutes at a pace at or slightly faster than 10km race pace take 5 minutes easy between the efforts

Cool down

Thursday Session

Warm-Up

20 times 200m @ max pace at which you can hold good endurance form – regroup and then 200m easy recovery together after each rep.

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.

This week we will be continuing with our phase of working on 1 mile and 5km race preparation. )

The technical focus of this weeks drills is on knee flexion; ensuring that the foot strikes the ground after the knee has started flexing and the foot is moving backwards

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

We will be doing split squats and then jump split squats / lunges

Suggested Drills for the week

Straight leg running

B-progression

Strides with focus on short strides and driving the ground backwards

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

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

5x1km @ 5km race pace 1-2 minutes recovery

5 mins cool down

Weekend 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

After some great performances over the last few weeks in races we’re going to be attempting to maintain that speed for a few weeks. This week we are doing efforts which have progressively shorter intervals as this has been show to allow more work to be done in a session.

From a technical perspective we will be looking to maintain high hips and a powerful push off the ground and will be progressing the exercises and drills we worked on last week

Suggested Drills for the week

Squats

Lunge progression

Straight leg running

Strides

Tuesday Session

12 minutes warm-up

All efforts @ 5km race pace

A) 3 mins effort, 2 minutes recovery

B) 2 mins effort, 1 minute recovery

C) 1 min effort, 3 minute recovery

repeat A to C 3 times, i.e, 3 min effort, recover, 2 min effort, recover, 1 min effort, long recovery, 3 min effort etc.

12 mins Cool Down

Thursday Session

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

3 x 800m

6 x 400m

4 x 200m

Stationary (while keeping mobile) recoveries between efforts – all efforts to be done at 90% of race effort, i.e, 90% of 800m race pace for the 800m rep

10 minute 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.

After some great performances over the last couple of weeks in races we’re going to be attempting to maintain that speed for a few weeks. This week we are doing efforts which will start fast and then slow just enough to be manageable but still very hard.

From a technical perspective we will be looking to maintain really good posture (nice upright torso with shoulders relaxed) even when fatigued.

Suggested Drills for the week

Straight leg running – with posture focus

A – March/Skip Progression – with posture focus

B – March/Skip Progression – with posture focus

Strides with balloon (imaginary) – with posture focus

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

40 minutes of:

During the warm-up decide an order to run in.

Start out at a steady (long-run, i.e. arerobic) pace the first runner then chooses when to start the interval, how fast to run the interval and where to end the interval – they do no need to tell the rest of the group their decision, the rest of the group will simply attempt to keep up as best they can. Once the first runner reaches the end point they have selected for their interval they turn around and run to the back of the group.

For a detail explanation with diagrams see here.

10 minute cool-down

Thursday Session

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

FIVE 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

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) with a 50-100m stride every 1km.