Thursday Session – Gerschler Fartlek

18 January 2016 - By Rachel Pearsons

This Thursday’s session is a fartlek session, so this time we will be using the Gerschler Fartlek.  Designed to improve fitness quickly, this session will not be unfamiliar to most of you.

We will meet at the sports centre for 7:30pm and will be leaving at 7:45pm to head off to the junction of Chelmer Road and Armond Road.  After our warm up, we will split into groups and start the session running up Chelmer Road, right down into Cromwell Way, left up Armond Road and then left into Cromwell Way and so on.  We shall run hard (80%) for 30 seconds followed by 90 seconds recovery.  The recovery is an ‘active’ recovery, so therefore keep moving and keep warm.  Each recovery will reduce by 15 seconds until we run the last effort which will be 30 seconds effort, 15 seconds recovery then 30 seconds effort.  This will end your first set and you will be given 3 minutes recovery.  Again, this is an ‘active’ recovery so you must keep running.  We will complete 3 sets before re-grouping and returning to the sports centre for stretches.

As the location is a variety of hill sections, straight sections and down hill sections, your 30 seconds of hard running will be at different points of the route making for good interval training.  Feel free to programme this session into your Garmin (or other timing/GPS device!) so that you can use it for time keeping.  If you are returning from injury or are having a recovery week from recent races, please let me know and I will happily provide you with a personal target for the session.

I look forward to seeing you all soon!

Happy Running!!