As per last week, the Thursday session focussed on speed and endurance. This was achieved by mixing short sprints with longer efforts. The short sprints were the speed element and the longer efforts the endurance.
Despite the rain we had a cracking turn out of 14 runners meet this week. We warmed up in Abbey Gardens before heading off to the North Walls Rec where we set-up on the corner of one of the rugby pitches. As it had been raining all day the ground was soft underfoot which is excellent for reducing the load on ankles and knees, but can be a little slippery so care was taken!
The plan was simple. We would run a hard effort down the long side of the rugby pitch, have a short recovery section along the short side of the rugby pitch and then another hard effort down the long side, with one last short recovery run back to the start. Once all were back we had a 1 minute break, before repeating the activity twice more through. The long sides were roughly 100m with roughly a 50m recovery. This was the speed element of the workout.
Following this we headed over to the cricket pitch. Here we ran a hard effort of the circumference of the pitch followed by a 2 minute rest. We then repeated this. Each lap of the cricket pitch was roughly 400m, so this added the endurance section of the run.
Once we had finished at the cricket pitch we headed back to the rugby pitch for 3 more laps of the pitch.
The session therefore consisted of 12 x 100m sprints and 2 x 400m sprints with a mix of jog recoveries and some static rests.
It was a weary, damp and slightly muddy set of runners who headed to the entrance to Winnal Moors for a cool down and stretch.
But that wasn’t all! Following a suggestion by Emma we decided to head to The Willow Tree to exercise our drinking arms with a well-earned post-run social drink. It was lovely to have Simon M and Elise join us, both of whom are currently injured (get well soon guys) and Catherine and Allen who were unable to make the running but came for the drink.
As ever, thank you to everyone who came and made it such an enjoyable session and get together afterwards. It is great to see the community that we are building.
Happy running everyone!
Coach James
Excellent session, as always, Coach James. Definitely helping with parkrun PBs!
ReplyDeleteThanks Alex!
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