Race Week

This week we have our next race: The Philosopher's Way 7km and 15km trail runs. We will pick up with the training blog next week.

If you're not running with us this weekend, I would do the short and long interval workouts from last week, and a 7km or 15km time trial on the weekend.

Good luck to everyone!

Week 4

Short Intervals: 4 x 400m; 2 minute rest

Long Intervals: 3 x 1km; 3 minute rest

Time Trial: 10km time trial

The CrossFit Local Endurance "Gentleman's Adventure Team" will be out paddling, running, orienteering, and hopefully biking for 6 hours Saturday at Harris Lake in the Gleneagles Challenge. Wish us luck!

Two of the Gentlemen, with the nuclear reactor's cooling stack in the fog behind them.

Philosopher's Way is the following Saturday. Looking forward to seeing all of the endurance-Locals there!

Week 3!

Here's the third week in the progression.

Short Intervals: 10-12 x 200m; 90" rest

Long Intervals: 4-5 x 800m; 2'30" rest

Tempo: 5 miles @ 85% of your 5km pace

As you can see, each week we're adding in more intervals, decreasing the rest, or both. Feel free to adjust these to how you're feeling, with the longterm goal always being progression. That progression can be measured in greater amounts of work (more intervals, longer distances), faster times, or decreased rest. You should probably only change one of these variables at a time.

And again, if you're feeling really comfortable at your short interval distances, maybe focus on the longer intervals (or vice versa). The focus is on high-intensity intervals! Longer runs are good for practicing your pacing, but what's going to make you faster is the intervals.

One thing that I would encourage you to try is to take the goal of the workout and adapt it to your interests to keep it fun. For example, even though I have a track literally next door to my house, I really would rather be running on the trail. So instead of doing 10 short interval 200m sprints on the track, I could use my goal 200m time of 30 seconds instead of the distance as my interval. So my whole workout would look like this:

A. Dynamic warmup: arm swing/pigs-on-iceskates, shoulder pistons, wrist circles, leg swings, lunges

B. Drills: 2-3 x 10-20 reps of 2-3 drills (running in place lean-to acceleration, exaggerated one-legged pull, wall drill, etc-whatever I'm feeling worst at)

C. Run 5-15 minutes, gradually increasing cadence from 90 to race pace

D. 10 x 30" intervals at max effort OR some cadence over my race cadence (102 for example). 90" active rest between intervals (walking!)

E. Run back to my car at race cadence or slightly below.

All told, this would take up to an hour, depending on how much skill work I felt like doing. It's important to get that high-quality technical stuff done in the beginning. And remember, hammer the intervals, but keep them close to each other in distance or time. The intervals ARE the workout. Everything else is just practice.

Week 2

Homework this week:

Short Intervals: 10 x 200m; 2' rest

Long Intervals: 3-4 x 800m; 3' rest

Tempo: 5km @ 85% of last week's 5km pace

Remember! The intervals should all be about the same duration. Go as fast as you can while maintaining pace.

I'm going to be paddling and camping at the beach this weekend, so I can't host any group runs, but if anyone else wants to jump in and run a tempo 5km this weekend, why don't we coordinate it all through Facebook.

Here we go (WEEK 1)

Let's get this endurance training started.

Homework this week:

Short Intervals: 8 x 200M sprints; 2' rest

Long Intervals: 2 x 800M sprints; 3' rest

Time Trial: 5km

Do either one or both of the intervals during the work week, preferably 3+ hours before or after your class at Local, or on a day when you're not coming. The goal is to hold the interval times at the fastest repeatable time possible-use a stopwatch! If you don't have a track, just use something roughly the right length that is repeatable.

For the time trial, find a good 3 mile course and go for it. This is our baseline workout, to help determine progress.