Keeping Your Winter Training Fresh

Winter can be a difficult time to keep yourself and your runners engaged and returning each week to training because of the dark nights and cold wet weather but here a few ways to keep motivated and your training sessions appealing.

There is no getting away from it that winter training is about building a base in preparation for those spring and summer nights when you are working on speed.

But you can deliver these sessions in a fun and engaging way if you just think a little differently.

You still need to include, tempo and interval sessions, recovery and long runs but think about where and how you could deliver these.

Winter is also a great time to build muscle strength, so if you usually train 2 nights a week and a Saturday morning and are finding it hard to find a venue to safely train at night, why not swap one of those nights and come in from the cold, hire a hall or go the gym and run a series of Strength and Conditioning sessions, we always recommend you use a professionally accredited strength & conditioning coach.

A good idea is to sit down and make a plan, do this on your own or with your club members virtually or face to face and make some mutual plans for the months ahead, do this at the start of autumn. Maybe plan to go as a club to a warm weather race in the spring that includes a 5k race up to marathon distance to cover everyone’s goals. Or possibly decide on something more local, a new event you haven’t been to before or a tour of parkrun, the decision will depend on you and your club member’s goals. Always remember to keep your goals achievable.

Alternatively you could organise an interclub race or relay, training could be focused up to this event. The event could be held as a trail or road race in your local area using the handicap system. You could plan a social event for after this, tea/coffee cake or even a  club night out.

Dark wet nights are difficult to train on and made even harder if you don’t have the appropriate gear. It’s a good idea to wear the correct kit. Layers, gloves, hats, luminous kit, lights, these all make running in lot more comfortable and easier in winter.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money on these products.

Remind your runners and yourself, if they are able to train in dark, wet and cold evenings they are building mental toughness and resilience. They might also be stronger than those who trained indoors all winter.

Organise a club day out. What about getting your members together to either go and watch or volunteer at a big athletic event. Possibly a large scale Cross Country Event where they will see all different levels of runners. This can be rewarding as well as motivating. You may find some of you members keen to try as XC race after this. Some Event Organisers may provide a specific club reward if you take on a volunteering role at an event, so check that out too. Contact your NGB regarding this: info@athleticsni.org

You may have to think outside the box a bit regarding delivering running sessions. If you train somewhere near trails with hills, utilise these for your hill sessions, hills are great for building strength. https://www.runni.org/tips-from-the-experts/learn-to-love-the-hills. Are there paths that loop round where you could create a tempo session.

Take another look at where you train, use your imagination and see what you can come up with. Is there somewhere you can deliver a Paarlauf session, this is an interesting way to deliver an interval session. In the winter months runners generally want to concentrate on improving their speed endurance, below are some suggested sessions, please note the reps are fast, but not very fast as recoveries but short as not to cool down too much. You must take weather into consideration. In summer reps would be very fast and recoveries longer as it’s warmer.

Winter

16 X 1 minute fast, 1 minute very slow

8 X 3 minutes fast, 3 minutes very slow

3 X 6 minutes fast, 4 minutes very slow

If you would like any further information or specific training sessions please contact the Run NI TEAM or complete the Flying Coach Visit form https://athleticsni.org/Clubs/Flying-Coach