Weekly Fitness Session: Arthur Lydiard's Out and Back Session

An Introduction to Running Fitness Challenges

In absence of our usual group runs, Goodgym Islington will be releasing a weekly running fitness session for you to try at home, or in your local area. Long distance runs may not be on everyone's agenda right now (particularly if you live in a busy city), so this upcoming series of sessions are perfect to fit into your fitness routine, without needing a huge amount of space to complete them.

Arthur Lydiard's Out and Back Session

Arthur Lydiard was a celebrated New Zealand runner and athletics coach, and has been credited for popularising running and making it commonplace across the world. His training practices maintained a focus on developing a strong endurance base for competition, and periodisation (training and conditioning in cycles towards "A" races).

This particular "Out and Back" session is an amazingly simple workout, created to develop good pace judgement, whilst attempting to run at a "maximal steady pace" (comfortably fast, almost to the limit of regular breathing, 75-85% effort).

Recommended warm-ups: High Knees, Butt Kicks, Hip Abductors, Springs, Can Cans

Find an area where you can run uninterrupted, if possible. Avoid road crossings and busy areas if you can.

Memorise your start location before you begin running.

Run for 10 minutes at a "sub threshold pace" (comfortably hard, 75-85% effort, not a sprint!)

After 10 minutes of running, immediately turn round and run back to your start point, following your original route as closely you can.

The objective is to replicate your original pace on your return journey. There are 3 outcomes for this workout:

1. Arriving back to your start point with 10 minutes over elapsed. You may have started your first rep too fast, and weren't able to maintain the overall speed throughout the exercise.

2. Arriving back to your start point in under 10 minutes. You may have been too conservative with your first rep, and can attempt to try running harder for a future effort.

3. Arriving back in exactly 10 minutes. You have insanely good pacing judgement!

This is a really useful training session, especially when we look at our running habits. Trainer Simon tends to start races too quickly, and struggles to maintain pace later on, and workouts like this are a great learning tool to highlight this.

Post your sessions on Strava, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #ggislingtonintervals and let us know how you get on!

The challenge finishes on Monday 18th May at midday, and a new one will be posted next week. Good luck!