Warm-up
25 side shuffle hops in the Bean Traders parking lot followed by a jog to the Southpoint Mall parking lot.
In the Southpoint Mall parking lot, the PAX completed a dynamic warm-up consisting of:
- Frankenstein Walks
- Knee Hugs
- Walking Lunge with Side Stretch
- High Knees
- Butt Kicks
Note: a dynamic warm-up should be in every runner’s toolbox and is particularly crucial on colder mornings and for older runners. A few minutes of injury prevention is worth a pound of cure (aka rehab). Dynamic warm-up based on this routine: https://www.podiumrunner.com/training/the-mattock-dynamic-warm-up-for-runners/
Workout
Split PAX into groups to complete the following rotation (each rotation lasted 12 minutes):
- Hill Sprints – hard effort up the Tobacco Trail hill bordering Southpoint Mall followed by jog down with short rest at the bottom as needed
- Easy Jog – conversational pace jog around the mall parking lot
- Fartlek – a funny-sounding Swedish word that means “speed play”, a fartlek injects higher-intensity intervals into a continuous run. They are a great way to play around with speeds or, if you’re preparing for a race, to get your body used to race pace (and what race pace feels like) without the same wear, tear, and recovery of traditional intervals.
I regularly complete hill sprints and fartleks and derive great benefit from both. Here is more info on them:
https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-5-different-types-of-hill-work-you-should-be-doing-now/
https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/fartlek-workout-101/