Somerset Road Runners Day

Somerset Athletics Network will be holding a road runners day on Saturday 9th July at Millfield School in conjunction with the Millfield Community Games.

In the morning I will be running a workshop aimed at runners wanting to improve their 10k performance. This will include a training session on the track as well as tips on how to plan for a peak performance and the different types of training to include in your programme.

After the lunch there will be a practical workshop for injury prevention and developing better running skills. The emphasis will be on runners and coaches learning to observe imbalances and weaknesses and having a go at practicing exercises and drills to correct them.

Download full details HERE including information on how to register.

Updated 22nd July
We had an excellent day at Millfield School and all the participants seemed to have a good time and learn a few things and as always I learned plenty from watching runners in action.

The morning was focused on helping folks understand the role of different efforts in training. From very easy running through marathon pace, threshold, VO2 max and alactic sprints (left above).

We then put it straight into practice with a training session (left below) that covered all of these areas with suggested running speeds based on current 10k performance from Daniels VDOT tables

The easy running was done on grass before doing some drills and sprints on the track. The 6 minute efforts were on the track and the 90sec efforts were out and back i.e. odd numbered reps were run the 'wrong' way round.

The big takeout for most runners was that for their easy/MP/threshold effort they need to take care to control the speed. Its very easy to run 'MP' reps at what is actually threshold and to do threshold pace at what is in practice 10k pace.

Gwent League return

After a couple months of not knowing if I would stand on the start line again I managed a muddy 10km round Hestercombe Gardens in the Gwent League last weekend. Nothing spectacular, just a brisk start and 3 steady laps on the undulating course before picking it up in the last mile to come home 4th overall and 2nd in the Somerset Championships behind Wells team mate Ben Tickner who is flying at the moment.

In fact the club as a whole had a great day with wins in a number of age categories including Oliver Fox and Laura Parker dominating the u13 boys and u20 women respectively and the men winning the Gwent League combined for the first time I think ?

Hopefully this marks the start of a solid block of training to get me in shape for the bigger XC races after xmas and then enable me to prepare properly for the London Marathon in April. Clearly time is running already and ideally I would like to be in much better 10k shape than i'm in at the moment. But you start where you start and at least in my favour I have years of aerobic training which gives me a good base to build from. Its going to be a fun 20 weeks ...