May track session
Hopefully by now you have had time to get your joints and muscles accustomed to cross-training. (If not check out our entries from Grayson Murphy World Champion mountain runner)
Our general goal with running in the first few weeks of the training year is to build a base safely and without injury. Experts agree this means focusing on small amounts of quality first, before incorporating any extremely long over-distance workouts or races.
This early season track session is designed to do exactly that.
Goal: Reinforce proper running technique and make running muscles more resilient. Build leg speed. Keep the total workout time and interval duration short to reduce total load.
Warm up:
20 min easy running
5 min stretching
10 min drills: A skip, B skip, skip for height, backwards running, carioca, high knees
200m (L4 effort but not all out, 5k running pace, ease into it. Focus on good technique)
200m easy (decelerate, walk for 50 meters, build into a jog, then hit the next interval)
Repeat 6-8 times
rest 5 min
2 x 400m at 5k pace w/ 2 min recovery
warm down: 10-15 min
Ideally this session will help increase your running efficiency in the early season. If athletes have done a good job with April leg prep the session should not make them super sore or take a lot out of them. If knees or feet start to hurt STOP. Focusing on running quality first before logging lots of miles will help make our summer running workouts more productive.