Four Great Training Sessions for Recreational Runners
Written by Tim Crosbie
From street miles through to trail ultra-marathons, the diversity of events recreational runners are participating in continues to provide coaches the challenge of developing training sessions that are both specific to their activities and that provide ongoing stimulation. While the list of available training options is extensive, let’s look at four training elements that strike a chord with Recreational Runners.
1. Fartlek Training
For a recreational group, Fartlek is the most versatile tool you have available. This type of training is suited to all levels and provides benefits in both endurance and pace judgement. With the right facilities and venue, a good Fartlek can be constructed to be inclusive yet challenging and allows runners to participate at their individual standard, even within a broader group with various abilities.
Fartlek comes in many shapes and sizes, but we’ll focus in on one particular variety that a coach can control well – time based Fartlek, and in this case the Pyralek or Pyramid Fartlek. A standard Pyralek suited to casual runners involves ‘ons’ of 1min, 2min, 3min, 4min, 3min, 2min & 1min with the “offs’ being half the previous ‘on’ distance… i.e. 1min on, 30sec off, 2min on, 1min off and so on.
All the coach needs is a whistle, a stopwatch, a session schedule and a circuit where the whistle can be heard at all times. Once the runners start they just have to listen out for the whistle – one whistle blow starts the ‘ons’ and two blows the ‘offs’. This type of Fartlek can provide a lot of variation – the circuit may be flat or undulating, the surface soft or hard and the ‘offs’ may be run at pace or even walked.
2. Using the Gears
Gear sessions are another form of Fartlek but with the pace only heading in one direction – UP!
Pace control, particularly early in an event, is still the number one problem for recreational runners, so learning the extent of their gears in training can be an invaluable lesson. How may gears does an endurance runner have? Well there is no real answer so the aim of the coach is to design a session that has sufficient changes in gear to see a difference with each increment, but not too many to make the increments only marginal.
Generally you can’t go too wrong with 6 to 8 gear changes over a 10 to 20 minute session. Once again, a circuit of anywhere between 500m and 1km is ideal to work the gears. A start cone and a mid point cone indicate where the gear shift occurs – three laps for six gears and four laps for eight make for the perfect session.
This type of session can take a while to perfect, so often in the early phase of introducing gears it can be advisable to do two sets of 10 to 15min and the likely outcome is that set two is better controlled than the first. With some regular use of the gears, you’ll soon find your runners nice and controlled at the start and bringing it home strong at the end – just how a recreational runner likes it!
3. Hills
Ask the members of a normal running group who likes hills and usually it’s a 80% ‘NO’ vote! So the aim of a recreational running coach is to turn this around and through smart training we can make hill running a strength and not a weakness.
Too often we concentrate on only one aspect of hill running, the up-hill, at the expense of the other - the down-hill. To be a truly effective hill runner you must work on both elements and have the technique of the up, down and transition phases drilled in to your runners through training. So what is the coaching process to get your runners embracing each ‘mound of opportunity’ they encounter? Basically you have to start with key up and downhill running techniques and the cues needed to have the runner holding correct posture and foot strike before commencing the conditioning phase. Without a fundamental understanding of good technique it is difficult to adapt runners to hills.
Once mastered, relevant sessions can then work on holding the movement patterns, mastering transition and building strength. Circuit hills are the best way to achieve this – continuous running over reasonable gradients on a stable surface. A decent up/down or down/up circuit trains the runner to move effectively. The coach should be looking for good drive and compact movement up then loosening of the body and the correct foot plant under the body for shock absorption on the way down.
Getting hills right is a long term process, but the benefits in physical and mental strength make working on them worth the energy.
4. Technology Naked
Technology is advancing as it always does. For many numerically obsessed runners this means there are an ever increasing number of gadgets and websites where their statistical fantasies can play out.
This is all very good for those who have the presence of mind to put into perspective the purpose of technology, but as coaches we are seeing training loads change and weird behaviours creeping in… exhibit one – the extra laps of the car park to get an exact distance on the GPS.
We are also witnessing some of the intrinsic joys of running disappear with carefree meandering around a new course being replaced by a focus on kilometre rates, cadence data, elevation achieved and Strava segment glory.
Our role as coach is to be the circuit breaker for this behaviour – remove the technology at times, set the expectations and encourage your runners to run for the sheer joy of running. For many this takes them back to their initial stages as a novice runner where the running world was a big mystery that lay ahead. Running with this state of mind is healthy and provides a refreshing outlook to those who may be getting too performance (or technology) obsessed.
For the Recreational Runner our coaching aim is engagement, continued participation and establishing positive lifestyle choices. So by returning to the basics, maintaining the joy of running and having runners take part for the right reasons goes a long way to meet these objectives.
What great sessions do you have in your coaching toolbox? Share them with your fellow coaches in the comments below.