Speed training: 200m repeats and we steal your recovery time AGAIN
It seems that speed training sessions with evil decreasing recovery periods are like buses. You wait for a while, and then two come at once…
Following on from last week’s recovery time stealer, it was a similar protocol at Waverley Harriers this time. As I did not have a mid-week appointment in the world of refereeing, I was able to go to the actual session (thanks Gary!) and take part. It was a strong turnout of around thirty other runners.
This one was really interesting as the session was dynamic, with the recovery period changing over time.
The 25 minute session started like this:
- Run 200m FAST.
- Walk 200m.
- Repeat!
However, over time a yellow cone was moved round the track, splitting the 200m recovery zone into walk / jog areas. Initially, mostly walking (e.g. 190m) but by the end of the session, you were having to jog pretty much all of it.
Now, this sort of training is right up my street, due to it matching the ebb and flow of football matches when refereeing (bursts of activity followed by calm). It was still a strong effort to keep up the fast runs by the end of the 25 minutes.
Let’s take a look at the ‘fast’ split times:
- 0:35
- 0:33
- 0:34
- 0:36
- 0:35
- 0:38
- 0:37
- 0:38
- 0:40
- 0:40
- 0:43
- 0:41
You can see how the reduction in recovery took its toll….
One of the more enjoyable and challenging speed sessions I’ve done, for sure. Not only that, I set a 200m PB (according to Strava) in the process!