Rock n Road Runners Thursday Intervals: Race Pace Alternations

This is a 60 minute group run focused on building strength, stamina, power and speed through interval-based training.

This session is lead by fully-qualified run coaches Dan & Rik and entails a thorough warm up consisting of easy running, mobilisation work, dynamic stretching, drills and strides. This warm up also focuses on improving various aspects of run technique, biomechanics and efficiency. Not will interval training improve your performance at all distances but it’s a really fun and social way to train. Anyone and everyone can benefit from interval-training regardless of experience level or goals.

The main set is usually interval-based, meaning that there is some faster-paced running for a set time or distance, interspersed with recovery which is either easy jogging, walking or standing. The aim of each interval session is to improve a certain aspect of our physiology, such as our pace at Lactate Threshold, Vo2 Max or increase our Running Economy and Neuromuscular Efficiency.

These sessions are also individualised for each attendee as we regularly carry out 3k and 5k time trials (or use a recent race result) to ascertain pace zones for different running intensities. This allows you to run at the right effort and avoid overexerting and overtraining.

The first session is free and all subsequent sessions are £5, unless you are a member of the Rock n Road Runners run club. If you would like to join the club click here or email rocknroadrunnersclub@gmail.com for more info.

THIS WEEKS SESSION

– Warm Up: Easy jogging, mobilisations, drills

– Strides: 4-6 x very short bursts of speed

– Main Set: Race Pace Alternations

2 sets of 3 x (3mins just above Goal Race Effort / 3 mins just below Goal Race Effort) with 2mins static recovery between sets

If you know what your goal race pace is, run 5-10s per km faster or slower for these intervals

If you don’t know what your race pace is then run at 8/10 for the faster efforts and 6/10 for the slower efforts. You can discuss effort further with the coaches on the night

Recovery between sets can be static or at a very slow jog

This session equates to 38mins of total work

– Feel free to carry out your own cooldown. This won’t be included in the 60min session