Thursday Session – Race Pace Training

8 February 2017 - By James Crisp

This Thursday’s effort session is ‘race pace’ training. As athletes, we all have personal goals and different race distances to aim for, therefore our target ‘race pace’ will be varied and also the ‘effort’ you put into the efforts! However, for simplicity, think of this as a ‘change in pace’ session. Examples below.

We will meet at Witham Leisure Centre as usual and begin our briefing at 7:30pm. We will then jog to Eastways Industrial estate, where, after a warm up, our session will take place around the 400m loop.

The session comprises 2min efforts with 1min standing recovering. We will complete 10 repetitions, therefore lasting 30mins.

 

Within the 2 min effort –

First 1 min – ‘Steady pace’ – think 15-30 secs slower than your Tues night pace. Able to hold short conversation. The purpose of this is to warm up your muscles each rep in preparation for the faster work.
Next 30 secs – ‘Tempo’ pace – think the pace you run on a tues night or a smidge faster. Able to hold a 2-3 word chat only.
Final 30 secs – ‘Race pace’ – think a 10k race as a guide. You should not be able to talk more than a word or so during this.

 

Examples –

9min/mile runner on a Tuesday might do the following –
1 min @ 9:15-9:30
30secs @ 9:00
30 secs @ 8:30
1min standing recovery

7 min/mile runner on a Tuesday –
1 min @ 7:15-7:30
30 secs @ 7:00
30 secs @ 6:30
1 min standing recovery

IF however, you use Tuesdays as a leisurely run, you might want to think about making that pace your slower minute and getting faster over the next 2 segments.

As with every Thursday, anyone who is injured or racing at the weekend, or coming back from illness etc – please take it easy and don’t push the pace. This session is designed to be a challenging one, and therefore if you don’t feel able to do the full 10 sets of efforts, you don’t need to! I’m repeating this session in March and so it will be a useful comparison/ progress check.

I will have a whistle to mark the times, however it would be highly beneficial if you have set your watch, or run with others who have set theirs. 4 whistles per 2 minutes is a lot!

After the efforts we will jog back and stretch at the leisure centre.

Please, please wear high vis and layers, layers, layers for the forecasted cold snap!

Look forward to seeing you there,

Becky and James

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