Training Thursday 24th September

 First of all a reminder to stick to the packs (the letters, A, B, C, D, etc) that you have been assigned, throughout the warm-up, session and cool down. These packs will be announced as of 18:45 on the day of training via the links at the top of the blog.

An explanation of Bubbles - the "bubble" number on the packs list is not your pack. The bubble number is a sequential ranking of the entire club membership into 10 groups of 5 based on recent Auldhouse 5k pace (or another 5k if you have not done Auldhouse recently). Depending on who and how many book into a training session, I will try to ensure that each pack consists of runners from no more than 3 adjacent bubbles (e.g. pack B may contain people from bubbles 3, 4 and 5) so everyone in the pack is reasonably well matched. We are trying to have only 3 or 4 people per pack to make the adherence to physical distancing easier and to avoid drawing attention to ourselves in public.

If you feel the pack you have been assigned is too slow, then I am afraid you are just going to have to live with it as this is a reasonably small sacrifice to make to allow us to have more freedom than the general public. The bubble ranking will be re-assessed every 4 to 6 weeks if there are any major discrepancies.

If you are coming back from injury and are not as fit as you were at your most recent 5k, let me know at least a few days in advance and I will re-adjust your "bubble" (don't worry, its not painful).

If you have booked to attend training but on the day of the training, you are not feeling up to a session, then I would suggest that under any circumstances (covid restrictions or not), it is not wise to come to the Harriers that night where, inevitably we are going to be doing a demanding session. In that case, just submit the form again (before 18:30) and tick the "no longer attending" box.

So the session tomorrow is 3 x 10 minutes threshold with 3 minutes jog recovery.

For a change we are doing the session entirely within College Milton on the "ring road" as illustrated in bright red in the map image below. This is a hilly circuit of just over 2km and is excellent for threshold on account of the need to control pace to match threshold effort despite long steep ascents and fast gradual descents. Start the session just off West Mains road where you enter the industrial estate at the pedestrian crossing. Follow the road down hill as if you were doing the 4 hills and then eventually up the very steep hill (Glenburn Road). However, at the top of this steep hill, turn left (this is still Glenburn Road) and this takes you back to the point where you started the circuit, just off West Mains Road. For the faster ones, you will do approximately one lap or a bit more in 10 minutes at your threshold effort. For future reference and to avoid me repeating all of the above if we use this loop again, I will refer to this as the "College Milton Circuit".

The warm-up and cool down are the direct route along the Queensway to/from West Mains Road and the club.

Alan

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