Alternative speedwork sessions

The Committee have asked me to put together some "virtual Tuesday track sessions" to act as a spring board of ideas you might want to try in you own running over the coming weeks. I have looked over some of our previous sessions to see how to adapt them - the state of my notes from the start of the year show just how wet it was back in March! Now that the weather is better it gives us a bit more freedom in our sessions to take longer rests without getting cold and also introduce a few different things into our training. Hopefully the suggested training sessions I've created will inspire you over the coming weeks!

Here's a list of the sessions; click on a link for more information:

The "FITT" model can be used for adjusting training load:

Frequency;
Intensity;
Time (duration); and
Type.

Track/speed sessions give us lots of opportunities to vary these different factors. I have tried to keep the sessions practical and simple, but you should adapt them as necessary. Training sessions must always be athlete led: you know your own body, your own training needs and training load and - in this case - the environment in which you will be training.

For these alternative speedwork sessions, you will need some sort of timing device and some landmarks to run between, such as trees, park benches, etc. The sessions have times for which you should aim to run between these two markers. As part of your warm up, make a mental note of your starting landmark then time yourself doing an easy-ish run/jog for the stated time: whichever landmark you get when the time has elapsed is your end marker. Use these two markers for the rest of the session.

As always, please remember to stay mindful of your health and safety and that of those around you.

I miss you all so much. I am looking forward to when we can all get together again properly. But for now I’m delighted to see so many of us continuing our running and supporting each other where we can.

— Jen Delaney