Thursday session – Race Pace

21 November 2017 - By Becky Grimwood

This Thursday’s effort session is ‘race pace’ training which aims to help improve your lactate threshold, enabling you to run at faster pace before your body starts to tire.

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 approx 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. Only able to chat a few words at a time.
Final 30 secs – ‘Race pace’ – think a 5km to 5mile race as a guide. You should not be able to talk more than a couple of words or so during this.

Examples for pacing –

A 9min/mile runner running at tempo on a Tuesday might do the following –
1 min @ 9:30
30secs @ 9:00
30 secs @ 8:30
1min standing recovery

This session is designed to be a challenging one, so if you are carrying any niggles consider adjusting your pace or even skipping this session entirely. Likewise, for those of you doing cross country or other races this weekend, you might want to adjust so that the fastest 30 secs is you tempo and slow the others accordingly.

We 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. A couple of runners the previous time we held this session said they had set their watch for 30sec beeps – which is ideal as long as you remember to give yourself 1 whole minute recovery and 1 whole minute of steady pace.

Please wear high vis and as ever, one of us will have a car at Eastways for you to put your coats etc in.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Becky and Steve