Category: Seniors/vets endurance training

This week we will be working on VO2 Max improvement (the key metric for endurance runners) and the psychological components of doing hard efforts.

The technical focus of this weeks drills is on knee flexion – making sure the leading foot is travelling backward when it touches the ground.

Suggested Drills for the week

Straight leg running

Toe taps

B-progression

Strides with focus on short strides and driving the ground backwards

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

Marathon Pace – 5 minutes
Easy 3 minutes
Half Marathon Pace – 5 minutes
Easy 3 minutes
10km Race Pace – 5 minutes
Easy 3 minutes
5km Race Pace – 5 minutes
Easy 3 minutes
1 mile Race Pace – 5 minutes*

10 minute cool-down

* If your mile pace is sub-5 minutes then feel free to do 1 mile ‘best effort’ and have some extra rest 🙂

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

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 will be continuing to work on pace in anticipation of spring with some 1-2 minute anaerobic efforts.

From a technical perspective everyone’s running form is starting to look pretty good so we’re good to add some ‘icing on the cake’ with some hip mobility and proprioception

Suggested Drills for the week

Toe touches – swing left leg forward while keeping it straight and aim to touch the toes of your left leg with your horizontally outstretched right arm; repeat this on the opposite side.

Trailing leg drill – a walking / running drill incorporating the action that the trailing leg does during hurdling.

Carioca (also known as grapevine)

Tuesday Session

10 minutes warm-up

40 minutes of:

During the warm-up give everyone in the group a number from 1 to 3, ensuring that there are roughly equal numbers of ‘1’s, ‘2’s and ‘3’s.

Start out at a steady (long-run, i.e. arerobic) pace then pick a landmark (lampost, postbox, bush, cone, anything!) that you are about to run past, the whole group should continue running at a steady pace after passing it, continue for 30 seconds, then all of the ‘1’s should run fast (3-5km pace or faster) back to the selected landmark, turn around at the landmark and continue, fast, back to the group. When the ‘1’s return to the group, pick a new landmark and then the ‘2’s run fast back to it after the whole group has gone 30 seconds past the landmark, repeat this for the ‘3’s and then continue this pattern until it is time to cool down.

For a detail explanation with diagrams see here.

10 mins Cool Down

Thursday Session

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

6 times 200m max effort for that distance.

4 times 400m max effort for that distance.

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) do the last quarter at a pace where you can only manage 3 to 4 word sentences.

This week we will be starting a bit more work at pace and improving VO2 Max since spring is in the air; there are no XC races this weekend so we’ll be stepping it up a bit.

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

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

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).

This week we will be starting a bit more work at pace since spring is in the air and some of you will be tapering for National XC this weekend.

For our technical goal we will be aiming to keep a nice tall posture

Suggested Drills for the week

A-March

Ball Slam

Jump Lunge

High Cadence running on the spot then lean forward from the ankle until you ‘fall’ into a run

Strides – imagine a helium balloon attached to your head lifting your head and torso up (but keep your shoulders relaxed)

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

4x 6 minutes @ 5km pace with 2 minute recoveries.

10 minute cool-down

Thursday Session

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

8 times 200m @ max pace at which you can hold good endurance form

5 mins cool down

Weekend Session

National Cross Country race or rolling hills

This week we will be aiming to get as much time over Lactate Threshold as possible by mixing some long intervals on Tuesday with some decreasing length intervals on Thursday.

For our technical goal we will be aiming to keep the shoulders and neck relaxed while making a hard effort.

Suggested Drills for the week

A – March (keeping toes up, knee up and chin up)

A – Skips

A – March with a focus on arms; 90 degree elbow, plane of movement alongside the body, elbow coming inline with torso as arm comes forward and hand comes in line with hip as arm goes back.

A – Skips with a focus on arms

6 x Strides; 1) Keep arms in correct plane, 2) relax the shoulders (focus on relaxing during out breath), 3) keep elbows at 90 degrees, 4) relax shoulders, 5) Drive elbows back, 6) relax shoulders

Tuesday Session

10 minute warm-up

4x 8 minutes @ 10km pace with 2 minute recoveries.

10 minute cool-down

Thursday Session

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

2000m effort 3 minutes rest

1600m effort 2.5 minutes rest

1200m effort 2 minutes rest

800m effort 1.5 minutes rest

400m effort

5 mins cool down

The efforts should be at approx. 5km race pace.

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 doing some short(ish) reps in advance of the upcoming XC race at Sherdley Park.

For technique we will be working on engaging the glutes with a view to helping the knee flex before your foot touches the ground.

Suggested Drills for the week

Straight leg, ball of foot taps

Toe-taps

B-Progression

Strides; focusing on pulling the ground backwards

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

6 x 400 @ 5km race pace – lots of recovery

10 mins Cool Down

Weekend Session

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

The main sets will be focused on lactate shuttling; working on the physiology and psychology of working around the lactate tolerance heart rate (the maximum heart rate / effort that can be maintained whilst lactate in the blood remains at a steady level; at any effort above that point lactate concentration continues to rise and you can only continue for a relatively short time at that pace.)

The technical focus of this week is keeping a tall posture for economical running and lower fatigue on long runs.

Suggested Drills for the week

A-March

Ball Slam

Jump Lunge

High Cadence running on the spot then lean forward from the ankle until you ‘fall’ into a run

Strides – imagine a helium balloon attached to your head lifting your head and torso up (but keep your shoulders relaxed)

Tuesday Session

8 mins easy warm up

1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, 8 minutes, 4 minutes, 2 minutes and then 1 minute at ‘max effort for that time’. With 2 minutes at a recovery pace (probably 5-10s per km slower than marathon pace) between each effort

8 mins Cool Down

Thursday Session

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

3x 800m @ 10km race pace with 400 easy between reps followed by a threshold effort* with 50m ‘sprint’ bursts.

* threshold should be approximately a pace you can sustain for an hour – this will be somewhere between 10km and half marathon race pace. This table allows you to look up your ‘VDOT’ based on race paces and then table 2 on the same page shows your threshold pace.

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

The main sets will be focused on lactate shuttling; working on the physiology and psychology of working around the lactate tolerance heart rate (the maximum heart rate / effort that can be maintained whilst lactate in the blood remains at a steady level; at any effort above that point lactate concentration continues to rise and you can only continue for a relatively short time at that pace.)

The technical focus of this week is keeping the upper body relaxed when working hard.

Suggested Drills for the week

A-progression

Strides whilst focusing on aspects of arm drive – a-prog x2 – correct plane, relaxed shoulders, 90 degree, relaxed shoulders, drive back, relaxed shoulders

Tuesday Session

10 minutes warm-up

Chain running – run in a line, the last runner runs hard (90% of max pace) to the front of the group, when the last runner reaches the front then the next ‘last runner’ sets of hard to get to the front. REPEAT for 15 minutes

10 minutes easy

15 minutes more chain running

10 mins Cool Down

Thursday Session

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

FOUR TIMES:

4 x400m first lap at XC race pace/effort, then aim to slow down by 10s per lap on each of the remaining 3 laps – minimal rest between laps (just enough to get everyone to start at the same time).

Recover for 2-3 minutes after the 4 laps 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) on a course that has rolling hills or Tatton Park XC.

The main set will be focused on lactate shuttling; working on the physiology and psychology of working around the lactate tolerance heart rate (the maximum heart rate / effort that can be maintained whilst lactate in the blood remains at a steady level; at any effort above that point lactate concentration continues to rise and you can only continue for a relatively short time at that pace.)

The technical focus of this week is making sure the knee is flexed when your foot touches the ground.

Suggested Drills for the week

Lunge progression

B-Progression

High-cadence running on the spot then lean forwards from the ankle until you cannot maintain balance without moving forwards

Strides whilst imagining 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

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

800m at Half Marathon pace then build every 400m until you are breathing so hard that you have to take a breath every step, following that 400m slow down just enough to be able to speak short (2-3 word) sentences, on the following 400m speed back up to the breathing every step pace, repeat this for 35 minutes.

This set is inspired by this post about finding your lactate threshold/VT2

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) on a course that has rolling hills or Tatton Park XC.

This week we will be doing some observed running to identify areas to work on in future weeks.

The main set will be focused on improving VO2 Max – the amount of oxygen the body can use during exercise; this is a key parameter in middle to long distance racing.

Suggested Drills for the week

Straight legged running

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

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

Strides

Tuesday Session

10 minutes warm-up

SEVEN TIMES: 3 minutes at 3km race pace 3 minutes recovery (can be walking)*

8 minutes cool-down

* This is one of the hardest sets of the year; reps 5 and 6 should seem almost insurmountable, rep 7 will only feel achievable because it is the last one…

Thursday Session

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

FIVE OR SIX TIMES: 800s at 5km race pace with max effort on the straights – recovery until breathing normally

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) on a course that has rolling hills or Tatton Park XC.