Assuming the weather works to our favor, the new runners will be doing day 2/week 5 of the C25K program. You will notice that this week's workouts change slightly from day to day. Each day inches closer to more continuous running. So for tonight, after our warmup, we will be doing 8 minutes of jogging, 5 minutes of walking, and 8 minutes of jogging.
Our advanced runners will be doing 2-3 miles of quality, to be determined at the track. The group has not done hill repeats yet, but that might be in order. The hill next to Admiral Peary Vo-Tech is the perfect length, roughly 400 meters. Depending on your preference, you can climb the hill either on the road or on grass. At the top of the hill, there is a walking path that leads you directly to the bottom of the hill. We find that 6-8 repeats on this hill makes for an excellent workout.
Mixing hills into a training routine is a good choice for any runner. They help your form, build strength, and give you a mental edge--after you've finished a hard hill session, the "burn" at the end of any race doesn't seem so foreign. Plus, a recent study showed that hill repeats of any sort help improve 5k times.
The story goes that Kenyan running legend Henry Rono was once espousing the value of hill workouts when a listener pressed for details: How long of a hill? How steep of a hill? How fast to run up? "The hill," Rono responded. "Any hill." That's more or less the conclusion a new study out of New Zealand has reached. It assigned 20 well-trained runners to do one of five types of uphill workouts for six weeks. At the beginning and end of the study, the runners did a 5-K time trial. Regardless of which of the types of hill workouts they'd done during the preceding six weeks, their time on the second 5-K time trial was about 2% faster. For a 20:00 5-K runner, an improvement of 2% would mean running 19:36.
Read the rest of the article here. And happy trails!
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