Welcome to the first week of our Late Spring Season for 2016! Wherever you are in the world we are super excited to have you onboard training with us.

WEEK ONE OVERVIEW

TLC: Intro to Strides, Drills & C&C

ACCELERATE: 5k Time Trial

LSD: Shorter run this week (drop back week)

TECHNIQUE TIP: POSTURE

Today we are going to focus on setting a good foundation with our body from which our legs can do the job of driving us forward. Where a building has its foundations at its base, a runner has its foundations from the hips on up. If you’re unstable in your upper body, your legs will have to fight to keep you upright and balanced rather than drive you forwards.

So, on today’s run have a good think about these four postural checks:

Neutral pelvis
Shoulders rolled back and down
Head tall (imagine a string is tied to the crown of your head pulling you up)
A forwards lean bending forwards at the ankles only (no bend at the hips or neck!)

Watch the video.

Alright, now on to this week’s workouts …

TLC WORKOUT (Mon or Tue)

Warm Up: 15mins jogging

Tip: On TLC workouts it’s a good idea to use the warm up jog to take you to a nice grassy park somewhere you can feel comfortable practising the drills.

Drills: Drills are best performed on grass or artificial turf that is 20m approx long (e.g. the try line to the 22 of a rugby field, the length of a cricket pitch, or the soccer goal line to the top of the goal box). Perform them one direction with a jog back for recovery (with the exception of exercises like side skips which are performed both directions to target both sides).

Ankling
Side skips (there and back)
High knees
Butt kicks
A-walk
A-skip
Straight leg skip

Tip: If you’re feeling uncomfortable about doing drills in a busy park, practise them at home first to get comfortable with the movements.

Running Workout: Today run 4x 15 seconds strides and jog for 1-2 minutes after each 15sec effort—make sure you’re fully recovered. Think about maintaining good posture during these strides.

Note: Strides or stride outs are fast controlled runs (not sprints!) designed to encourage good running form and to improve comfort levels when running at greater speeds. So it’s important not to run them too fast. As a gauge, imagine you’re running a mile-long race and run that speed. Read definitions for other running jargon.

Warm Down: 15mins jogging.

C&C (Core and Conditioning): Complete two sets of the following:

10x air squats
10x single leg squats
5x donkey kicks on each side (opposite legs and arms)
30secs prone plank hold
10x side leg lifts on each side

Tip: Today we’re introducing some foundational movements that we will use throughout the 6-week season. Spend extra time and effort getting the techniques right rather than just going hard.

ACCELERATE WORKOUT: 5K TIME TRIAL (Wed or Thu)

Be sure to include an easy day of either full rest or a very gentle run between this week’s TLC and ACCELERATE sessions.

Warm Up: 15mins jogging (or less if you feel you will be too fatigued to complete 5k) + dynamic stretches + short drills + 3x50m strides (see this post for details on this warm up)

Workout: Run 5k as fast as you can.

Keep in mind that it is always better to aim for even kilometre splits throughout the 5k, which usually means starting a little slower than you think you should.

Today’s 5k time trial which sets your training paces and race projections for the remainder of the season. So it is important that you can prioritise this.

If you have a local 5k event or a parkrun, you could run the time trial there in order to have some company (shuffle your week around to suit so long as the TLC workout is at least two days before ACCELERATE). Otherwise you could drag a friend out with you (they could ride a bike).

If you’re doing the 5k solo be sure to find a flat, safe place to run—either measured like an athletics track (12.5 laps) or at a place where you can use a GPS watch to track distance (without interference from tall buildings or thick trees).

Once finished you can take your time and plug it into our calculator to produce your training paces. Record these somewhere you can easily reference them.

And don’t forget to share your 5k time trial experience with your TempoFit Facebook community!

Warm Down: 10mins light recovery jogging.

LSD WORKOUT: (Sat or Sun)

Today is a drop back week in order to give your body a full recovery from the 5k time trial.

Distance: 70% of LR

Remember: Your LR is your longest training run over the four weeks leading up to starting this TempoFit season (e.g. if your LR is 15k then today you will do 10.5k).