Ok there seems to be a real uptake in ‘run clubs’ around town and throughout Australia, so we thought let’s add another one.
Nahhhhhhh not even! We have no interest in taking people away from existing run clubs or gatherings you are already a part of. The social aspect of like-minded people getting together and going for a run and having a coffee or beer afterwards is taking off and in no way do we want to compete or tinker with all these little networks being established all over town.
However, I am sure people performing these run’s week in week out are seeing progress with your ability to run the distance. However you may wish to get to that next level of performance so you can keep up with another person you are in secret competition with, or perhaps you just want to improve your times a bit week in week out. The reality is once a week long runs isn’t enough for that!
Insert Hammer Athletics NOT a run club…club! To get faster in your weekly runs there must be an element of interval work.
Interval work increases your overall run pace through a variety of measures:
- By increasing your cadence or stride frequency. Basically, to be fast you must run fast. But trying to run faster over a 5km 10km or more etc you usually burn out early and then your overall performance diminishes. The way you increase your 5km, 10km and further is to make sure your steady state pace is faster without having to actively push. This only happens when you put your system in harder running zones that aren’t as long in duration followed by a rest interval, resulting is better stride frequency and better overall times.
- It raises your EPOC or excess post oxygen consumption. This is physiological adaptation your body goes through when we do bouts of high intensity running followed by low rest efforts. The body basically goes “wtf was that session,” and then for the next 6-12 hours it prepares the body just in case we do something stupid like that again. This elevates your fitness significantly in half the time.
- As mentioned in the last point intervals cause an EPOC and give you a big fitness effect in a fraction of the time it takes for a long run. This means you aren’t pounding the pavement as much reducing the incidence of injury. With any running starting from no base to an expert runner, there is always a significant injury rate associated with it. These vary from overuse injuries from poor load management to impact injures or even illness/tiredness from too much running. But substituting one long run session early in the week with an interval based one reduces overall kms whilst not decreasing fitness, resulting in lower injury prevalence. Win Win right!
Seeing as no one likes doing interval work on their own (there are some psychos that do… but they are murderers) we have decided to run a interval session on Monday afternoon 515pm starting 13th May for 6 weeks. This session will include a fitness test at the start to get a gauge of everyone’s level so we can individualise the work rates. We will then rotate Max aerobic speed work, with fartlek training and hill repeats in a rotation over the 6 weeks and then retest at the end. We absolutely guarantee that your run club pace will improve out of sight and your ability to beat that person you secretly are racing will happen.
It will be free for all Hammer Members and if you are not a Hammer member it will be $10 per session but paid upfront totalling $60.