BASE WEEK 2: Rene’s Sessions

If anyone wants to join next week's sessions, the schedule of my 3 key workouts is below:

Wednesday: Uphill Sprints (Ticknock carpark, 5pm-7pm). I'll be doing 8x30sec steep uphill sprints with 1:30 recovery walk downhill

Friday: Structured fartlek (Marlay Park 5:30-7pm). 8x30sec sprints with 1:30 recovery. Warmup will consist of 10min base run, dynamic stretching. Cooldown will be a 20min base run.

Sunday: Marathon-pace run (Marlay Park, around Noon). 36min marathon-pace run. 10min base run warm-up and 5min cooldown. I'll be running at 4:46min/km pace and will cover about 10k in the 51min including warmup and cooldown.

This is the "peak" week of my first 4-week cycle of Base Training (volume approx. 51km total).

SESSIONS: Training for the Base Weeks

For those hill runners who are targetting the Leinster League, the Trial races, and Snowdon, the best time to start Base training is now and run with it for a full 16 weeks, followed by 16 weeks Intensity and 4 weeks Peaking. This will give you 12 weeks of solid Racing form that you just have to maintain in Summer.

Intro - What to do with different priorities
Alternatively, if you're currently gunning for the Cross-Country, keep doing what is working for you at the moment, then take a full 4-week break once you've completed your last race. You can do one or two slow jogs per week if you have to in this Recovery phase, but try and do a lot of strength work (weights, resistance) instead, at least one aerobic non-running session pr. week (rowing, swimming, cycling, skating, skiing, pilates, yoga), and otherwise just rest and enjoy yourself.

If you gain a few pounds that's fine too. You'll lose them anyway, and this extra weight will give you an additional energy-reserve for the hard trainining weeks ahead.

Once done with your break, pick the day you want to start racing (in earnest, you can do tune-up races and test races all year), and split the weeks in between in 45% Base, 45% Intensity, and 10% Peak.

Since no one will be doing Intensity training, at this stage, here's the Base training sessions.

Base Training Session

Training Objectives:

1. Build aerobic capacity and endurance
2. increase injury resistance
3. increase muscle activation capacity

Base Principles

• 6 training days/week
• 1 rest/recovery day/week
• 3 "key workouts"/week
• 1 day between key workouts (no two in a row)
• 3 base runs/week (1 can be replaced by biking/swimming etc.)
• 3 strength sessions/week (weights, pilates, yoga etc.) but no advanced plyometrics

If you have less than 6 days to train, keep the 3 key workouts and lengthen your base running on the remaining 1 or 2 days. If you can only train 3 days/week, keeping only the three key workouts is fine. One of them is an endurance run, as you will see below.

If you'd like to use the official sessions posted by the Crusader's coaching staff, replace my suggestions as below. Be careful not to use non-Base sessions during the Base phase, as these will do you more harm than good. I'll specify this below.

Volume and Intensity

When training for 10k distance (or equivalent time) or shorter, emphasise the maximum pace you can sustain over a reasonable time period. In these races speed is more challenging than distance. For half-marathon and above either speed or distance can be more important depending on your goals, strengths, and weaknesses.

I don't include volume and intensity here, since everyone is different. In the Base phase the key rule is that you shouldn't leave any session feeling utterly shattered. Tired yes, destroyed no.

Volume depends on what you're used to handling. 10 repeats of 30 sec sprints may be easy for you, or 5 may sound hard. Try it out and gauge your level.

If you want precise pace settings and guidelines, mail me at zarrock60 at hotmail dot com and I will provide these.

Key Workouts

You'll be doing one of each of these primary types of workout every week:

• Speed: Hill repeats. Find a steep hill, charge up it for 100-200m or 30secs. Rest 1:30. Builds strength and speed.
• Intensive Endurance: Fartlek during a base run. 30 secs or 100-400m efforts, or simply by feel. Builds speed and prepares body for longer intervals later.
• Extensive Endurance: Marathon-pace run. Builds fatigue resistance. If this is too hard, do them in intervals of 5-20min with 5 minuts of easy running in between (this is called Cruise-Intervals)

You should do dynamic stretching/drills before every key workout. These workouts activate a lot of muscle fibres and doing the dynamics before will give you a better performance and lessen risk of injury.

Key Workout Alternatives

The nature of these key workouts will change as you progress. If you have 8-16 weeks to do base training, I recommend replacing the Hill repeats with the following sessions from week 5 onwards (don't worry, you'll be doing plenty of uphill repetitions later):

1. 30/30 session (30 sec full sprint, 30 sec rest): Builds more speed than hill reps, but less strength. Increases VO2 max
2. 40/20 session: Better than 30/30 in all ways, but start with 30/30 if this is too tough

If you have 16 weeks base training, I suggest starting with a few 200m sprints in the last 4 weeks:

1. 200m: Run at somewhere between 45-50secs in the beginning. Rest 3x your running time. This session builds pure speed and if done on the track improves your running form and prepares you for intensive intervals later.

If 200m is too long, you can do 100m. Don't do 400m or longer. This will happen later and is not speed training.

Another alternative is:

1. Downhill sprints: Find a short slope and run down all you can. Increases leg turnover, muscle recruitment, and stride length. But be careful, the risk of injury is higher when using this session too much.

Base Workouts

For your other runs, there's only a few simple rules in the Base phase:

• 3 Base runs (slower than marathon, faster than your slowest, e.g. "recovery pace")
• Min. of 1 Base run should be a hill run (to work terrain specific muscles)
• Min. of 1 Base run should be on the roads (to monitor your progress reliably)
• No recovery runs (training isn't intensive enough)
• Do a "speed burst" of 15-30 sec max sprint every 10-20min during base runs

Your base runs build your aerobic capacity, increase bone, cartilage and collagen density, and improve injury-resistance.

Official Club Sessions

If you're planning to start your Base phase now, the current club sessions are inappropriate for the objectives of the base phase. The club assumes a unified strategy rather than an individual and the current sessions are preparing for either cross-country races or the marathon.

So if you want to start base training only after the cross-country season and your rest, keep using the official sessions for now. After that you can implement the sessions above to get ready for the hill running season in May-Aug.

The current official sessions are either too long and too slow for the base phase (the interval sessions), or, they are too fast (the tempo runs). The same goes for the Mixed Interval sessions. These are appropriate only in the Peaking phase of your season, and we will come back to these later.

In summary, if you're preparing for a race right now or have already completed your Base phase earlier, use the official club sessions. If not, follow the advice above instead. I will post my own suggestions for Intensity, Peak, and Racing training on this site later.

As a final note, hill runner Paul Kelly is running Circuits on Wednesday evenings, I suggest doing these if you can, as one of your weekly strength sessions.

Technical Drills

I recommend doing some technical drills every week as well to improve running form (high knees, running with no arms, bounding etc.). You should do very little (2x20sec of a few drills). If you want details on this, please mail me.

If you are asking "where are the terrain specific drills", such as how to cope with heather, scree, bog, and other hazards of the hills, don't despair. I will cover this in detail later, but this level of specificity is not necessary in the base phase, and some types of terrain training is not needed if you focus mainly on the more trail-based races (rather than, for instance, the rougher terrain you will face in the Irish and Leinster Championship).

Full Programme

So these are the basics, if you want a full training programme send me:

1. Most recent 5k, 10k, half-marathon or marathon results
2. Dates of your planned peak races
3. Available time pr. week (hours and days pr. week)
4. Previous training volume (mileage or time)
5. Cross-training used/desired
6. Any injury information
7. Distance/time for planned peak races

I'll then send you a sample programme in Excel format. Let me know if you have Excel 2007.

INTRO: Welcome to Crusaders Fell

I hope this site will provide a fulcrum for communication between the members of Crusaders AC who are primarily running to become better hill runners.

WINTER LEAGUE
Crusaders AC had a good 2007, first we secured the Winter League title in the hills both for the women and men with team consisting off:

MEN
Shane O'Rourke
Alan O'Keefe
Rene Borg (the editor)
Jason Reid
Gavan Doherty


WOMEN
Aoife Joyce
Niamh Ni Cholmain
Eva Fairmaner
Bronagh Cheetham
Deirdre Ni Chearbhaill
Sharlene Bell
Geraldine O'Shea
Sarah Heal
Mary Collins
Emma Sokell
Rachel Walters
Lornie O'Dwyer
Mary Donnelly

On a personal note, this was unfortunately the last of my own major contributions, as 2008 was harrowed by injuries. Luckily there was enough new and old members to carry the Crusaders torch into the Leinster League (Shane and Alan would also be absent for most of the LL races, however, and our team didn't quite reach the lofty heights of the WL).

In the course of the WL, we had many close seconds and thirds in the team's but no victories. Alan O'Keefe and Shane O'Rourke finished 2nd and 3rd overall. Third Crusaders was yours truly in 15th while Gavan Doherty was 20th. Aoife Joyce finished 2nd woman overall and recorded two individual victories while Niamh ni Cholmain was 6th and Eva Fairmaner took the F40 title in 7th.

LEINSTER LEAGUE
Later an injury-ravaged men's team finished 4th in the Leinster League while the ladies took another victory with Aoife Joyce, Crusader's Ladies Captain, also crowned Leinster League Champion. Eva Fairmaner, took the 1st F40 prize in the League as well.

MEN
Shane O'Rourke
Jason Reid

Jason Kehoe
Rene Borg (the editor)
Gavan Doherty
Mark O'Sullivan

WOMEN
Aoife Joyce
Niamh Ni Cholmain
Eva Fairmaner
Bronagh Cheetham
Deirdre Ni Chearbhaill
Sharlene Bell
Geraldine O'Shea
Sarah Heal
Mary Collins
Emma Sokell
Rachel Walters
Lornie O'Dwyer
Mary Donnelly

The women recorded a stunning 11 team victories and 3 individual victories (all Aoife Joyce). Only lowpoints was low team competition in the women's and a defeat at Hellfire to archrivals Clonliffe Harriers.

Our men were, in the end, powerless to break the reigning hegemony of Rathfarnham WSAF, and recorded no victories. Highest placed Crusader in the league was Jason Kehoe in 12th.

My personal highlight was finishing 17th in a very competitive Brockagh field. Unfortunately, I suffered a season-ending injury on the last 200m of the race and watched the rest of our campaign from the sidelines.

European Trial

An exciting European Trial race over a gruelling 12km course (8km for the women) finished in disappointment as Aoife Joyce narrowly missed out on qualification. It saw an exciting internal Crusaders tit-for-tat fight between yours truly, Jason Kehoe, and Richie Healy (then not yet a Crusader), in which Crusaders finished 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th with 23 seconds between the latter three of us (Jason Reid leading home the pack).

2009
It's early to talk about 2009, but we have two new strong additions to our squad in Richard Healy and his brother Robert Healy. Along with myself and Jason Kehoe, I expect this to form the core of our hill running team for 2009.

We're hoping to bring in more, and for the support of our "aces" Shane O'Rourke and Alan O'Keefe as well as other long-time hill runners Gavan Doherty, Mark and Bill O'Sullivan, Diarmuid O'Cholmain, John McNaughton, and Paul Kelly.

In addition, new recruits will be very welcome. If anyone is interested in joining a highly motivated Crusaders hill running team, drop me a line at zarrock60 at hotmail dot com and and I'll be happy to tell you about the club and our plans for next year's hill running season.