Whatever distance you're planning to race,
t's important to mix up your training.
So, on top of your long, your temper, and your recovery runs
you'll need to do some key speed sessions.
- In this video we're gonna be covering
four different sessions that you can
adapt to the distance level that you're currently at.
You will, of course, notice that Heather and I
are on the track today,
but these sessions can, of course, be adapted
to whatever suits you.
(upbeat music)
- All of these sessions will require a thorough warm up.
So, start off by doing a minimum
of ten to fifteen minutes easy jogging,
and if you usually include drills, add them in now.
And then, also, add in some dynamic stretches.
You want to make sure that your body is ready to go
as these sessions need to be done at a strong pace.
- [Man] So finish off with some strides
to get yourself ready for the session.
Start with good form, hips forward, fast on your feet,
and accelerate through to about 80 metres,
turn around walk back,
and repeat that two or three times.
- As we're on the track,
we're gonna make the most of the differentiation
between bends and the straights,
equally though, you could use trees, lamp posts,
or any other evenly spaced markers.
And the idea is you get to run the straights hard,
and then use the bends for recovery.
- You don't need to get too caught up on pacing this
because we are only talking about 100 metres,
but basically you need to be
working really hard on the straights
so that when the bends come,
you're looking forward to that recovery.
And as a guide we'd be talking about 7, or 10, or 3k
pace on the straights,
and then on the recovery,
you really need to be taking it easy,
but do try to resist the temptation to walk
because we want this to be a continuous run.
- Yeah, so the target for this session
is going to be continuous running for 10 minutes
of bends and then straights,
and after 10 minutes is up,
you're going to take 1-2 minutes complete recovery.
So, just walking until you feel ready to go again,
and you're going to repeat this once more.
Or, if you're feeling really strong,
or training for a longer distance,
you can even try and do three sets.
Then, finish it up with a full warm down.
- [Man] You can adapt this session for wherever you are
and whatever markers you can find,
but the idea is to mix hard efforts with recovery
for a set period of time.
We've chosen 10 minutes,
but you can, of course, do shorter amounts of effort,
or more sets.
Or, you could just do one long, continuous set.
(upbeat music)
- This is a meaty session,
and it was a favourite with one of my old coaches,
the pyramid.
It is as it sounds.
You're gonna be increasing the distance
and then coming back down the other side.
So, for today's session we're going to use
200 metres as our starting point.
Then we're gonna increase by 200 metre increments
all the way up to 1,200.
Then, back down the other side.
The rest is going to increase and decrease
proportionately as well.
- It does depend what distance rates you're targeting,
but today we're gonna base this around the 5k.
So, your rate should be based around your 5k target pace.
And that means the 200 should feel pretty easy,
in fact, probably the 400 too.
But believe me, it's gonna get harder,
but you do have more rests to compensate for that.
- [Woman] Yeah, and obviously going up to 1200
is a long way.
It's a pretty tough session,
but you can equally adapt it to make
1000 as your pentacle point or even 800 metres,
but just make sure you focus
on maintaining that pace throughout.
- [Man] If you don't have a track or a gps watch,
you can, of course, do the session based on time.
So, just increase the time you're running
to correlate with these distances we've discussed.
But do please be mindful that
you don't have some sort indicator,
you're gonna have to be really careful of your pace.
- [Woman] So, just to reiterate,
the exact session is going to be 200 metres at race pace
followed by 20 seconds rest,
400 metres at race pace followed by 40 seconds rest,
600 then 60 seconds rest,
800 followed by 80 seconds, or one minute twenty of rest,
then one kilometre, one minute forty rest,
and then finally at the top of the pyramid,
1200 metres followed by two minutes rest
and then follow it back down to 200.
As you get to the shorter reps at the other end
you should start to feel really strong.
The thing I love about this session is
once you've reached that maximum distance of the pyramid,
it all feels downhill from there.
And remember, again, to make sure you
finish it all off with a thorough warm down.
(upbeat music)
- As it sounds, this session is starting 1 kilometre reps
at your choice in race pace,
and today we're focusing on 10k race pace.
Now, one kilometre on the track is two and a half laps,
which means you're gonna finish at the opposite diagonal
to where you have started.
And we are gonna give you two minutes
to cross that diagonal before starting the next rep.
Now, if the race you're choosing is 10k,
then you should aim for up to 6 reps,
hoping to keep the same pace from the first
right through to the sixth rep.
To summarise, this is four to six times,
1k at your 10k race pace with two minutes walk recovery.
- This is another session that you can adapt
and take away from the track.
Obviously, if you have a gps watch,
you can just mark out a kilometre.
If, however, you just have a plain stopwatch,
you can still roughly work out the distance
because if you break down your 10k pace
you want to run how long it would take you to do a k.
So, for example, say you take 50 minutes to run your 10k.
That means each k is gonna take you five minutes of running.
So, if you've got your pacing right,
you should actually finish your next five minutes
back where you started your first set.
And then, repeat this six times,
but obviously, if you are just doing a shorter distance
or your starting out with something like this
you could do three lots of 1k,
or you could even build up and do a really big session
of 8 sets of 1k.
(upbeat music)
- Learning how to pace is important,
not only for race,
but for training too.
This session, when executed properly,
will help you not only develop your top end speed,
but become more aware of the pace you're running at,
but also where your limits lie.
- Yeah, so most tracks should have 100 metre markers.
So, make sure you familiarise yourself with those,
and the idea is you're gonna start at around your 10k pace.
So, say that you are a 50 minute 10k runner.
Your first 100 is gonna be 30 seconds,
and then the idea is to try and get two seconds quicker
for every 100 metres,
and so your fifth one, which in theory should be
8 seconds quicker than your first,
and it will feel hard,
but as a result of that you get plenty of recovery
because after the 500 metres
you're going to walk straight jog the final 300
to get you back to the start.
And then aim to repeat that eight times.
- And another option would be to include
a couple of these 500s either at the end of your
warmup as something to get you ready for the mean set,
or equally, after your mean set as a pacing focus
or a little bit of speed work,
but bare in mind this is gonna be a lot harder.
That being said, your pacing should be a lot more
tuned after your mean set.
- Yeah, and of course, if you don't have a track
then you just need to find some evenly spaced markers
on a flat or gradual gradient.
And if it is a bit shorter than 500 metres,
then you can just do more reps with less rest.
(upbeat music)
- Just as the warm up was important at the start
of the session,
the warm down is equally important in the end.
Now, obviously, the harder you've gone in the session,
the less likely you are to even want to jog another step,
but you're likely to produce some lactate
and you really need to be able to flush that out
from your muscles.
- Yes, so once you've got your breath back
then just go for a very easy jog.
This needs to be low intensity.
You can do it with your friends,
have a bit of a chat,
and it's a great time just to reflect on that session
that you've just accomplished.
And then, afterwards, stretch out any areas
that might be particularly tight
and maybe even use a bit of foam roller.
- As we've mentioned before,
there's so many variations to these four sessions
and if you're new to this type of running then it makes
much more sense to concentrate on having
lower number of reps
and don't worry about the distance so much
because you can build that up over time.
Far better to concentrate on the pace change
because you can increase the volume as you go on.
- Yeah, and make sure you record all of the sessions you do.
So, the times and pace you run at,
the number of reps you did and the rest you had.
So, then, you've got a good starting point
when you come back to do it next time
and you can see that progression that you make
and it is worth noting that
if you're not used to doing any speed work,
and especially on the track,
you will feel it in your legs the next day,
possibly two days later,
so just take this into consideration when you're planning
your overall training week.
So, hopefully you've enjoyed this.
Hit the thumb up like button if you have,
and to make sure you get all of our videos here at GTN,
just hit the globe to subscribe.
And if you are new to track running
and you want to see an introduction to it,
we've made a video for that just here.
- And if you want to see the venue about Kenyan Hills,
click here.