Who needs a whole athletics track when just 300m of it will do? Especially when 300m repeats are good enough for Mo Farah…

This week’s speed training protocol, courtesy of Waverley Harriers (although I missed the original session so was doing this as homework!), was as follows:

• Run 20 minutes of 300m fast / 100m jog recovery
• 3 x 400m (2 minute recoveries)

This translated to 11 reps for me. As my legs were still a bit heavy from the previous day’s tempo run (a ‘hard’ session), I didn’t want to follow this up immediately with another hard one. I skipped the 3 x 400m stage for this reason as I had that feeling I had done enough. This is my overtraining ‘spider sense’ that I have learned to pay attention to!

Given the relatively short recovery periods, and jogging them rather than just stopping, this was more of an endurance training session. That is adding a bit of variety to my training programme, and also useful for the football refereeing part of my fitness.

300m repeats are a staple of Alberto Salazar, who has coached (among many others) Mo Farah, so definitely worth a look!