Your coaches plan sessions to follow a structured programme which will include the following:

1. Hill sessions; these are designed to build strength which is necessary for virtually any running event. The same effect can be achieved by weight or resistance training but this is less practical for a Wednesday night.
2. Indoor circuit training; this will also build strength but using a wider group of muscles and helps more with general fitness. Typically this is done in the school gym on a more occasional basis especially with inclement weather.
3. Speed Sessions; whilst the club is primarily for endurance running improvement can only be made by going faster! Speed sessions are therefore needed for the runner to get used to running faster particularly for race distances up to 5 miles/10k. These can be around e.g. 400m repetitions, fartlek (speed play pepping up longer runs) or fun events such as relays.
4. Speed endurance; having pure endurance (from long runs once a week) and pure speed together are not enough. Speed endurance sessions are designed to get the runner used to faster efforts than normal (i.e. faster than say 10k or marathon pace) for significant periods of time. These sessions tend to follow one of the following formats:
   

• interval training e.g. several 1k or 1 mile repetitions followed by a short recovery period e.g. 100m walk or 400m jog.
• Pyramids; set periods of effort progressing upwards in length of time then downwards again e.g. 2,3,4,3,2 minutes of effort with 1 minute walk in-between.
• Mixtures of different paces e.g. jog/race/sprint between lamp posts or jog/effort every 100m on a track.
• Tempo (or threshold) run; this is classically a comfortably hard effort for 2-4 miles with, say, 2 miles warm up and warm down. This is difficult to do in our group training format so will only be done occasionally and is reasonably easy to do yourself.
• Timed Runs; these are done at full race pace but are only occasional and designed principally to measure progress. Examples are the once a year time trials on the track (100m/400m/1mile) and times for the Chanctonbury Road circuit.