Despite the slightly overcast weather and the risk of a light shower or two we had a great turn out of 18 runners on what turned out to be a lovely, but muggy evening run.
We warmed up at Garnier Road. Unfortunately and quite amusingly it was here that a bird decided to relive itself on Rachel. Despite this we got on our way and heading down the riverside path towards the viaduct. We started the Fartlek reps immediately and continued them until we reached the gate to St Catherine's.
We had a take a short walk as there were a few cows grazing on our route, but we were soon up and running. Rather than heading up the steps we ran around the bottom of the hill and up the valley, continuing to alternate our intervals between slow, medium and fast.
At the top we took in the view and I gave a preview of next week's session. We then turned and did some downhill intervals back to the gate. From here we headed out to the viaduct where we did some slightly harder intervals across the bridge before turning and, after a short recovery, we did it again.
From here we went back down 5 Bridges Road and along to the trail entrance to the St Cross path. This path was a little harder to do the intervals on. We managed some along a tree lined avenue, before stopping to take the obligatory photos, this time with a back drop of the Chapel at St Cross. After this we jogged back to Garnier Road where we stretched again.
As an added bonus Catherine had made some yummy, and fairly healthy, snacks for the runners to share. They were destroyed by the hungry runners. Thanks Catherine!!
The session was around 4 miles, run over the course of about 40-50 mins.
It was a good session and a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone who made it so!
A couple of the runners went off and did a few extra miles afterwards and we were still chatting when they returned. adam then decided to cool his legs off by jumping into the Itchen!!
Next week we will probably be doing a social run as a large number of the group will be prepping for either the Alresford 10km or the Eastleigh 10km and will or should tapering!
Here's some more info on Fartlek (taken from the blog written in April):
Fartlek is not as bad as it sounds. It is actually Swedish for "Speed Play" and is a running session which combines speed and endurance.
I asked the runners to consider three running speeds:
Medium - 5km pace
Fast - full on sprint.
Recovery - a slow, conversational pace
The plan was to run for around 40 minutes and periodically through the run I would call out medium or fast and the point to run to. The medium intervals tended to be longer and the fast intervals shorter. Each was followed by a recovery pace where we regrouped, before the next interval.
We varied the length of the recoveries and the order of the interval types, so that on occasions we had 2 sprints back to back or a short sprint, followed by a longer medium section. We also varied the length of each of the intervals.
Here are the benefits of fartlek training:
- It’s a great test for strength and endurance
- It improves speed and mental strength
- It improves your ability to put on a spurt in races and overtake the competitor when tired or knock seconds off your finish time
- Incorporating surges of speed helps you learn how much you can push your body over shorter segments
- There is a lot of flexibility within the workout, for example a high intensity session where you push your body to its limits or a low intensity session if you are tapering for a race or easing back into running post-injury
- A fartlek session can be completed alone or in a group.
Happy running!
Coach James
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