Different Track

Still undecided about whether I should be sick or not. My preference would be not, but I am not sure I get a vote. See how the chips fall on this one. Fingers crossed for not.

I have been feeling fine all day and trained this morning, but started feeling a bit flat a little after lunch. Picked up again now, but that might just be the coffee talking. Will see how things pan out after coaching this afternoon.

Say that was a nice segue.

See what I did there.

So yep, coaching this afternoon. A bit of a run session on the program as is the case with most Thursdays. For the past few months we have been doing these sessions down at the track, but as we creep towards Summer and the amount of light we have increases we have been doing the session more and more at one of the big parks near the track. The track is awesome and everyone feels just a little bit special when they run there, but it is a nice change to be able to run somewhere else now and then.

While the track gives a great surface and is measurable and repeatable, it is also only 400m long. The length of the track is great for coaching as you can always see the athletes, but it can be a bit dull for longer efforts, particularly week after week. The great surface can also be a detractor as it provides no variation in surface or gradient which is great for building a bit of strength and resilience. For a bit of variation we are finding that people are really enjoying the opportunity to run elsewhere, not having to pay track entry is a little popular too.

The session this afternoon is a nice bit of short and sharp threshold work. The session is made up of 5 x 4 minute efforts run at around 10km pace, that bit is pretty straight forward and standard practice for a threshold session. The bit that gets a lot of people is that the recovery time between the efforts isn't that easy, but rather is 60 seconds done at around half marathon tempo pace. This tempo recovery time means that the entire session is 25 minutes of pretty solid effort. People are always a bit surprised by these sessions because they sound a bit short, but they always find that it makes for a good bit of ouch when done right. For threshold sessions to be done correctly it isn't large volumes that are needed, but rather the correct amount of volume done at the right intensity. When it comes to doing threshold run sessions week in, week out, that correct amount of volume is really only about 20 minutes, which is what this session is built around.

Should be a good session, after which I am hoping I am feeling right as rain.