Those of you who have been attending the Tuesday night interval sessions on a regular basis may have noticed a pattern. We are working to a four week cycle. Each week we perform a different session, week 1 is 400m reps, week 2 is 800m reps, week 3 is 1200m reps, week 4 is a compound set where we perform 400m, 800m and 1200m reps within the same session.
The pace for each session remains the same e.g. your goal 5km race pace or your 10km race pace for the season depending on the distance of the event you are training for. What changes each week is the rest period which is 30% of the work interval. For example is you are running each 400m at 1min 30sec pace the rest interval for week 1 is 30sec, week 2 is 60 sec and week 3 is 90sec. Week 4 will be a combination of those.
The way that we are progressing the sessions is by adding 400m to each session every two weeks. For example we began performing 10x400m. Now ten weeks later we are performing 15x400m, 7x800m + 1x400m and 5x1200m. Obviously this progression applies only to those who have been attending from the start. You can of course join us at any time and just perform fewer reps to avoid overloading yourself.
So next week will be 5x1200m with a 90sec recovery if your pace is 1min 30sec per 400m. If you are faster or slower than this you will have to work out your own recovery period and obviously not everyone is up to performing 5 reps and may choose to perform 3 or 4 depending on your level of fitness or if you are tapering for a race.
Best of luck to all those competing over the next couple of weekends. See you August 3rd back down at the track!
PS. A number of the club members are still meeting at the track next Tuesday to run together. Andrew, our resident PE teacher, will take the warm and cool down.
