Basecamp Week 6

QUALITY

Hill Series
1-2 miles warm-up/cool-down; 1-2 miles of hills run in a series. 

This is a continuation of our hill training. Please refer to Week 4 for a basic primer on hills & the way to approach them generally. In this session we are going to run a series of hills. The reason for this is to begin to get a better ability to manage & control your efforts on both the uphill & the downhill portions of a series of hills. When you run hill repeats, the hill get broken up into two different portions: up & down, obviously. When you run a series of hills, the hill becomes one entity, both the up & the down sections & the way you approach each will play a part in how difficult the hills are in effort. For this first hill series, we’ll be adopting the same approach we took with the hill reps: just run up & down the hills...do not focus on running hard or fast, or easy or slow. You do not need to run at any specific pace or effort. Try to run the uphill & downhills as smoothly & relaxed as possible. 
What is a hill series? You have room for creativity here. You can just use a series of hills in your neighborhood or around your workplace. You can run out & back on a series of hills or make a loop that has a few hills on it that you can link together. You can add as much order as you want or allow a little chaos to reign & just run what shows up! A reminder that we are NOT looking for very steep hills that will require you to walk up them. Of course, if you do have to walk, that’s okay. But you shouldn’t try to add difficulty to this session by making an extremely challenging route. We are trying to learn how to modulate or effort, pace & body mechanics based on running up or down hill. We do not want to add additional stress into the situation. 

SPEED ECONOMY

4-6 x 200m w/ 200m jog

The 200m interval distance is a classic distance & is ubiquitous nearly all training programs. 200m reps are really excellent because they require a bit of endurance but do not overtax the system & when combined with a 200m easy jog, are an excellent way to extend the speed element of your training without developing the anaerobic system & inducing lactate accumulation. In most programs I would give my athletes 5K paces for these intervals. Since you are not using paces in this program I recommend that you start these out a little slower than your strides pace to be sure you don’t overextend yourself. If after 2 reps you feel the pace is manageable, you can go a little faster. Keep track of the pace you run on these. We’ll be doing this session again in a few weeks & you can compare your results. Again, a reminder that the recovery is  a VERY EASY pitterpat jog. You can do this on the track, where on a standard track 200mis half a lap, or on the roads. 

LONG RUN

• 30-40 mpw: 8M EASY w/  final 10 min CLOSE
• 40-50 mpw: 10M EASY w/ final 10 min CLOSE
• 50-60 mpw: 12-14M EASY w/ final 10 min CLOSE

CLOSE = A CLOSE is fast finish in the final minutes of a long run. Other programs might call this a “fast finish”. These are designed to allow you an opportunity to start pushing a little bit on the long runs. By controlling the amount of time you push the effort or pace faster, we allow you to dip your toe into the water of a Quality Long Run (QLR). The QLR is a fundamental aspect of the Telos program. These are long runs with workouts built into them. These are used for athletes training for all races but play a huge part of the half marathon & marathon programs I devise. Another reason that I began including CLOSES in my programs is because my athletes began running too hard on their long runs, whether by pushing early in the runs & making an effort too fast or by racing others & making the effort too hard. It is critical to remember that the “hard” part of the long run is in the extension of the distance, not the pace of the run, especially in a base building program. This is a very common mistake made in building fitness. You cannot get fast & strong at the same time without really flirting with injury &/or overtraining. 

FUNDAMENTAL: PAYING ATTENTION

Listen to the podcast episode.