Les Croupiers Running Club Forum

Lyndon, I think your link to http://www.runningforfitness.org/book/chapter-8-injuries gives very good advice. (Not sure about the excessive vitamin C intake tho', as it is water soluble & will be immediately excreted.)

James, I've come into competitive running from a different direction from the (track) guys above, but I have to say that I am in a great deal of agreement with what they say. This is not only from an academic research point of view, but also in practical implementation in terms of training & the results achieved. To push the envelope of performance you have to learn to run quick! That is even at the expense of total mileage. Having recently ramped my interval training sessions to 3 per week, (with suitable safeguards for injury protection), it will be interesting to see what results can be achieved this season.

One word of caution, I agree that hill reps are a great training technique, however, I have found to my cost in the past that they can be overdone with injury resulting. So, be careful.

Here's an interesting article: http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_frank49.html
Tho' how these speeds can be maintained for the intervals mentioned (in training), I do not know. My intervals are far shorter.

Ev, sure they can be done year round but...

Due to the obvious incline, you are never going flat out and as you said previously, they are done for strength and speed endurance. You tend to find the tougher hills in Cross Country and not Road races. Winter is generally the time to build that strength/endurance base.

Once the Spring/Summer comes, the majority are training for shorter road or track racing (not all I agree)and you are now looking to build up to flat out speed work. This would then be done on the track or any other surface but you don't tend to be doing 1km and above reps this time of year.

Just my thoughts...

Seb Coe came from Sheffield. Sheffield has more hills than Barry.

Mick, I wasn't going to say anything but last week when I was running with Archie, you were about a 1/4 mile ahead of us and when we caught you up, we had to slow down. I don't think I can run that slowly to be honest but maybe next week I will let you try a run with me...

No Ev, I'm looking at it from the perspective of anyone that wants to get quicker. I won't be doing speed work on the track this year but I will be on Port Road or on the Knap Prom. Somewhere flat where I can get top speed up.

Martin..

there has to be a balance of over training..

I cannot think of anything worse than running a marathon every day or 7 days.. I'd rather eat spam for 7 days..

what would others do.. see poll

James, not advocating running a marathon each day for 7 days (or eating spam) it was simply a fact that we are able to perform huge amounts of physical exertion if we need to. We could and can run those distances but would need to back off pace and recover well.

I mentioned if you want to run faster, run faster, and you may need to cut back on mileage and racing to achieve that. You obviously need to recover so wouldn't do more than 3 quality sessions per week with at least day day off or easy running between, probably more like 2, but I wouldn't then be putting junk mileage in.