Plan for next Tuesday is:

a) 5k/10k Long Distance Group – Mixed aerobic intervals.

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group – Anaerobic lactic session to improve
lactate tolerance.

2x 3x 600m [1.5k] (1′) (5′) Total: 3000m

The session consists of 2 sets.
Each set consists of the three repetitions of 600s.
The recovery between the repetitions is 1′.
The recovery between the sets is 5′ (400m jog).

It’s been a good weekend so far. Down under we hear from Monika that she won the New South Wales 800m/1500m championships in her age group. Not a bad season opener. Nearly a PB by Marielle in the handicap. Good running by Paul in the Bath 1/2 and a PB by Kathryn over in the Paris 1/2. Well done folks, looks like you will have a great season ahead!

What else? Last Wednesday I went up to Lee Valley Athletics Centre and attended a talk by Geoff Williams on “Basic Principles for preparing Endurance Athletes”. Amongst others, Geoff has coached Richard Goodman, who won then National XC U17 race two weeks ago. If you are interested, please check the slide pack here for more details.

Plan for next Tuesday is:

a) 5k/10k Long Distance Group – Long aerobic intervals with a fast (anaerobic) finish.

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group – Anaerobic lactic session to improve lactate tolerance.

2x 4x 400m [1.5k] (1′) (5′) Total: 3200m

A couple of events you want to consider:

• Long Distance
  • March 21st – SEAA 6/12 Stage Road Relays
  • March 27th – Victoria Park Open 5m
  • March 28th – Eastleigh 10k
  • March 31st – Highgate Harriers Open Meeting (3000m)
• Middle Distance
  • March 31st – Highgate Harriers Open Meeting (400m & 800m)

Let’s hope the weather is getting a bit better for Tuesday. So here is what is coming next week:

a) 5k/10k Long Distance Group – Long Aerobic Intervals with short Anaerobic Intervals to improve speed endurance and finishing speed. The long intervals will help you to improve your stroke volume and your ability to supply your muscles with oxygen at a higher rate.

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group – “Up the clock” session

600m (4′)
700m (5′)
800m (6′)
900m (7′)
1000m

Total Distance: 4000m

To be run faster than 1500m pace.

Conditions were pretty bad last week, cold rain and quite a lot of it. Well done for making it through the session, somehow by just watching I picked up a cold Lesson learnt – always bring additional kit! On the positive side, imagine you trained very hard for your main race of the season and then it rains “cats & dogs” style. You experienced and rehearsed it in training, so you will not be hit by surprise.

Speaking of racing. I hear some of you have started to enter some races – great news! I just want to highlight there is the South of England Road Relays coming up March 21st. It’s a 12 stage road relay for men and a 6 stage road relay for women. Stages vary between just over 5k (short) and under 8k (long). The course is around the Open University in Milton Keynes. We have plenty enough participants in our group alone to file a whole team So please get in touch with the team managers, Andrew T. and Jane F. It’s a great way to meet other Serpies,
fosters team spirit, an opportunity to to speak to athletes from other clubs and also to test yourself against the best runners and clubs in the South of England. Yeah, Go Serpie!

In the mailbag, I got a couple of questions regarding the concept of developing speed, related to the session the long distance and middle distance group do. I can fully sympathy with you with the all the running jargon you come across via my emails, e-groups, RunnersWorld or other pages on the Web. We have quite a wide audience from athletes having trained for many years to athletes new to track training. Agreed, it  is confusing, even coaches within the club use terms and training methods inconsistently and it can be a challenge to explain terms from exercise physiology into layman’s terms.
For that reason I put together a couple of slides which explain you:

• What type of energy is required for each event?
• What type of energy is required for each run?
• How long will the energy last?
• How the different training runs stack up?

Event Specific Demands (Slides)

So here is what is coming next week:

a) 5k/10k Long Distance Group – Long Aerobic Intervals with short Anaerobic Intervals
to improve speed endurance and finishing speed. The long intervals will help you to improve
your stroke volume and your ability to supply your muscles with oxygen at a higher rate.

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group – Anaerobic lactic workout to improve lactate
tolerance.

3x { 3x 300m (1′) } (400m job in between set) to be ran faster than 800m pace,
starting from the outside lanes and break after 100m to the inside lane.

This week we had 8 teams taking part in the 10k Paarlauf. 3 individuals opted for a 12-13x 400m[5k]
(60-90”) solo effort. I gathered the following times (no chip timing) afterwards:

1. Caspar P. / Mark S. 31:28 (CR)
2. Stephen B. / Gaetan E. 32:28
3. Becks C. / Sandy W. 34:29 (CR)
4. Andrew S. / Reinhard K. 34:40
5. Gillian K. / Kathryn H. / Simon H. 35:00
6. Melissa M. / Sarah B. 36:24
7. Raoul M. / Andy G. 37:29

A DNF from the defending Paarlauf champs and CR holders Nick S. / Crossley E., Cossley continued
after Nick was forced to drop out.

We had new CR’s for the men and women only teams. In general the teams seem to get faster and faster.

What else? I went through most of the profiles and did a bit of analysis. I tried to understand in which areas you are already very strong and which areas you think you have to improve across the various
performance factors. The good news is that we have a good coverage of strength & weaknesses. In other words, one of you is top in one area in which others need improving. While this is the case keep on observing what your fellow training mates are doing and ask them how they do it.

So here is what is coming next week:

a) 5k/10k Long Distance Group – Long Aerobic Intervals with short Anaerobic Intervals
to improve speed endurance and finishing speed.

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group - “Down the clock” session

600m (6′)
500m (5′)
400m (4′)
300m (3′)
200m (2′)
100m (1′)

To be run faster than 800m race pace.

It is quite fascinating what is possible these days with modern technology. Caspar was kind enough to share his HR data from this week’s session. As you can see we have 10x “peaks” and 9x “valleys”. When going up the peak it gets pretty much quickly steep and you run into oxygen debt when approaching your maximum pace you can maintain by breathing quite hard. At this stage you operate at you maximum capacity to turn oxygen around (VO2max). When you start to stop you slowly get more oxygen back in your lungs again and your heart is starting to slow down pumping before it settles in during recovery, usually around 120-130bpm. This part of the session during your recovery time is as important as your running part, it strengthens the heart muscle by expanding and contracting.

To squeeze even more out of this session, it would have been possible to start again running once the heart rate started to drop below 120bpm. This would mean that you would reach in each repetition sooner your maximum capacity in the following reps. For example, from recovery t4 to t5 the time to reach maximum work rate could almost be halved. In case of Caspar you have a well trained athlete, a beginner would clearly struggle with the recoveries and would not be able to maintain a consistent high heart working rate throughout.

What else have I picked up from last week?

• Athlete Profiles – I think I have now enough profiles which keeps me busy for the rest of the year. Once again thanks for taking the time, it is important. Reviewed a couple of them and will get back to all of you, please be patient.
• Injuries – Some of you already started to report some niggle and injuries. Unfortunately, this can happen. Please make sure you are properly warmed up and don’t skip the stretching. Missing out on those two aspects means that your muscles are not working at the right temperatures and your joints are not mobilised, means risk of micro tears in your muscles, hard training without stretching, muscles can shorten and you can get very tight (hamstrings, calves, etc.). For those with ITB, calf and Achilles niggles, get a foam roller. So far I heard good feedback with this approach.Related to injuries, interesting talk by Dan Pfaff who prepares GBR athletes for London 2012.
  It’s a bit technical in parts, but I hope you get some key messages out of it.

So here is what is coming next week:

b) 800m/1500m Middle Distance Group

Kicking off a series of progressive session targeting speed development. This week we will do 4x (4x 200m (1′ per rep)) (3′/400m jog in between sets), 3200m in total.

Few things about last week’s session:

So here is what is coming next week:

• Group A : 5x (1200m [5k] (1′) + 400m [3k] (2′)) Total: 8k
• Group B: 6x (1000m [5k] (1′) + 200m[3k] (2′)) Total: 7.2k

• 1 lap around Battersea Park [Steady Pace]
• 4x 150m [Standing start, 50m to build up, 50m @ 85% effort, 50m to run out] (jog back to start
  position)
• 3′ min walk
• 4x 70m [Falling start, max effort] (3′ min walk)
• Hurdle Mobility Drills – 80 clearances
• 1 lap around Battersea Park [Steady Pace]

I picked up two things from last week:

• Warm-Up – Every week we do the warm-up, it is important, we do it together and my experience so far
  is that the warm-up helps to reduce the risk of injury. Test yourself – how often do I do a warm-up on my
  own? The warm-up has two aspects to it, first improving mobility and body temperature, then progressing to
  technical skills to prepare for the session ahead. Sometimes we rush through this a bit and I can not
  always sense how much time everybody needs for the warm up. If you feel you need more time or even
  you need to run 10-15 mins before the warm-up please feel free to do so. Your individual needs are
  most important.
• Marathon Training – A controversial subject. We have a couple of marathon runners taking part in the
  session. My view on marathon training is that the event is like 99.5% aerobic and 0.5% anaerobic, so
  unless you are going for a very fast time little speed development is required for the marathon and you
  gain more by focusing on the key workouts for the marathon. Like 5k/10k, the marathon has its own
  training focusing on mid long run, tempo run and long run combined with steady runs will get you a good
  result. Considering you are all busy people my view is that training time is best spend to focus on the pro
  longed (marathon) paced run during the week to teach the body to burn fuel at marathon pace. I feel taking
  part in an interval session and perhaps a longer run on a Wednesday asks for trouble. You may have done
  a great session on a Tuesday, but you are not recovered for a session on a Wednesday. In addition to run
  a solid 10-16m at marathon pace you need to be fresh and you need to recover from the session as well,
  similar to the long runs those are big sessions. In addition, usually around March you will go through a very
  intense period of increasing the mileage and long runs plus knowing the Serpies going through a very busy
  racing schedule too! Maintaining an interval session at the same time on top of that is a lot. Please take
  those things into consideration and balance volume, racing and intensity when making decisions about
  your training.

So here is what is coming next week:

• 2x 4x 1000m [5k] (1′) (3′ between sets/400m jog)

• 3 lap warm up + 6x strides
• 2x 5x 300m [1500m pace] (1′) (8′ easy jog in between sets)
• 3 lap warm up

The weather forecast for Tuesday looks good and the first session of 2010 should go ahead.

The focus for the next couple of weeks until the end of March will be more on volume. Early March we will ease
off the volume and increase the intensity to get in good nick for the first race. In between we will start to do a bit
more technique work as well.

For this week the session will be:

a) 5k/10k Group – Hybrid Session

• 1 lap (2.75k) Carriage Drive Circuit [Steady]
• 10x 500m [5k] (1′/walk back to start line whatever comes first)
• 1 lap (2.75k) Carriage Drive Circuit [Steady]

b) 800m/1500m Group – Establish where we are

• 4x 400m [800m] (400m jog recovery in ~5′) to establish a base line of your pace
• Sprint Drills/Technique Runs 3x 5x 90m (slow walk back to start, 4′ between sets)

Looking forward to see you all back injury free.

Best,
Coach Urban