Club Run with England Athletics

31 runners took part in the first of our England Athletics Club Run sessions on Tuesday 1 March. The session took the form of a 90 minute practical session, followed by half an hour Q&A in a room in the Leisure Centre, for those who were able to stay.  

After sending everyone off for an initial slow run, our EA Coach, Chris Hollinshead led a long warm-up, starting very gently but quickly evolving into energetic, dynamic stretching.  The second part of the session was a series of accelerating 60 metre sprints.  Running in groups of 4 or 5, runners repeated the distance several times getting faster with each repetition.  Chris invited everyone to imagine themselves as a car – perhaps starting as a Fiat 500 and ending up as a Lamborghini.  More fun than trying to pinpoint whether you are running at 60% or 95% capacity!  

The final and longest part of the session was a series of runs from the museum, up the service road, down past the car park and back down the path beyond the skateboard park.  There were 2 versions –  1 km and 1.3 km.  Runners could choose which they did.  After static recovery, they repeated for a total of 3-5 times.  It was a great way of combining runners of all abilities in one session.  We ended with static stretches.

Chris is a very experienced endurance runner and coach, with a friendly, informal style.  I know I am looking forward greatly to the next two sessions.  He says that each time he will repeat the extended warmup, but that the rest of each session will be different.  And as on this occasion, all runners of all abilities are very welcome.