Thursday session – 400m step-ups

10 January 2018 - By Becky Grimwood

Thursday evening’s effort session is – 400m step ups! (No – there are no step machines in sight!)

These will be at the usual Gershwin Boulevard location. Please meet at the leisure centre ready for the briefing at 7:30pm. After some info on the session, we will jog to the efforts location and complete the dynamic section of our warm up.

Runners will then complete 30 mins of efforts –
Run for 400m, clockwise around the water. This will be done in three parts – starting off at 5k pace for the tighter bend, accelerating to around 3k pace for the back stretch, then to around mile pace for the final wider stretch by the road. Either Kerry or myself will be a marker for where this 400m stretch finishes. If you don’t know pace, just try to run a little faster for each section, hence the ‘step up’.

Once you get to myself / Kerry, your recovery begins. You will have 200m active recovery. This means walking or jogging. It does not mean running or standing still! The 200m will be out and back on the straight to a point which will be coned.

If setting garmins you will have to calculate your own timings for number of reps. At my pace I predict I would do 6-7.

After the efforts, the usual jog back and stretches will happen.

If you are doing cross country /other races at the weekend, are fairly new to effort sessions, or are returning from injury then I suggest you run these purely as 400m reps, at just under 5k pace without the increase on the bend. Ask for any advice tomorrow if you are unsure.

As ever, wear high vis please – Gershwin is fine but the run up there still crosses over /by roads. I will have my car there for extra layers so you can stay warm before/after.

Kerry and I look forward to seeing you all there.

Becky