Thursday, August 9, 2018

Saturday Session & The next exciting installment of Coops'Corner

Saturday Session

When: Saturday 11th August

Time6am - 8am

Where: Meet at JC Slaughter Falls Car Park, Sir Samuel Griffith Drive, Mt Coot-Tha

What:  2 hour trail run.  Led by Matt L, following some of the new and improved trails at Mt Coot-Tha.  No-one will be left behind, we will be using the loop back technique.

Followed by Breakfast and a coffee of course.

Cost: $2 (I will bring some refreshments)

ALSO IF YOUR UP FOR IT

Time: 8am - 8:30am

Where:  Where we finish the run

What: 30 mins of Strong Man training with Matt L on the grassed area near the toilets.

Cost: Your soul

Coop's Corner

Last week I explored three different elements to a successful training program. This week let’s have a look at what happens when the road goes up. And why we should go up with it.


Hills: Some runners do gym work. Some runners (me) can’t stand the gym. But strength work is a very important element of a running program. Hills are a runner’s natural gym. The way you use hills varies in the same way interval work does.
There are short and sharp hill reps; designed at building raw power and explosive strength. Great for a 5km training program but less appropriate when you head towards the 21.1 or longer. Longer hill reps, 1 minute or longer are a great way to build leg strength. These can also been done as progressive sets, or pyramids.
If up and down x 10 doesn’t sound like your bag, find a run that has consistent hills in it (trail running anyone?) and tackle it for 30 – 40 minutes. Don’t worry about you’re average pace, that will take a hit on a hilly run. For a rough gauge, the recovery between the hill efforts should be roughly 2 – 3 the time of the hill effort.

Story Time: In our previous lives as triathletes (well runners that tried to swim and ride), Liss and I would often ride with a group friends and teachers from school. One of the guys from school came from a family of cyclists. His dad (65 years young) would often join us on long rides, and put me to shame. When chatting to him on the way back one day I remember him clearly saying (through his strong Finnish accent) “I look for hills.” In his daily cycling he made a deliberate effort to go find any hills on the course. I would usually do the opposite.
When I am out on long runs now, or out in the trails, his words still ring true. So now I look for hills. Knowing that while they hurt, and my average pace won’t look as good on Strava, the long term gains are totally worth it.

See ya next week for my favorite type of training, and probably the most over looked by a lot of us… THRESHOLD!!

Happy Running

BRS Coaches

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