The Workout Of The Day for Thursday, 9.2 “Yeah, we’re running again.”

Howdy folks,

I hope ya’all had fun with the skills work yesterday, and that things are starting to make sense on the technical side. Still having trouble? No sweat… keep plugging away!

Today- no big surprise – we’re back to the running of the stairs.

Yeah… ouch.

We’ve been doing pretty much the same running workout for the last couple of weeks, and frankly… I’m good with it.

This is kind of like the weekly 2×20; it’s a foundational workout, and doing the same basic thing (with subtle variation…) for several weeks in a row works out nicely for us.

Doing things this way, you get better at doing the workout as you get stronger, you build skill as you build strength… insert some kinda’ cliche of your own here…

These workouts – the 2×20 and the weekly Stair Run – are hard. The better you get at them, the harder they are, and the more benefit you derive from them.

They’re hard enough that it should be pretty much impossible to get bored.

So, we do them a bunch (at least in this phase of our training,) mixing things up just enough to keep us entertained.

Make sense?

OK.

So, after all that, here we go again, today’s workout is –

More G**Damned stairs, Damnit….

– Get on your bike and warm up for 15 minutes or so.

(we’re going to warm up for any running efforts we do, all season, with some time on the bike. )

– Mosey on over to your stairs/knoll/whatever, and get set. Stretch, have a sip of water, turn up the volume on your Ipod.

– Jog up the stairs. Walk down.

– Sprint! up stairs, fast, using whatever stride is most comfortable. Walk down.

– Repeat x3

Rest for 1 minute, walking slowly up and down stairs.

– Sprint up stairs, this time using quick, tiny strides, 1 stairstep at a time. Jog down.

– Repeat x3

Rest again, same as before.

– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stairsteps at a time. Walk down.

– Repeat x 2

Rest again.

– Sprint up stairs, combining the previous two exercises; long step, followed by 2 short steps. Do 1x.

Walk down.

– Run up stairs, high knees – (page back to a couple of Thursdays ago if you’re unsure of what I’m talking about.)

Repeat x2

Rest again, 2-5 minutes.

– Walking lunge up stairs –

Check out the video – http://vimeo.com/4272332

Do these up the stairs, pay attention to the notes on form. Speed on the vid is perfect…

repeat x2

– Sprint up stairs, free form, just go as fast as you can. Walk down. Go until spent, or speed drops appreciably.

– Repeat entire damn thing if you’re a freaking animal.

Get back on bike, spin out your legs, go home.

Have fun!

– a note on the length of the stairs:

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; don’t do these repeats on a giant set of stadium steps, on an endless hill, or up fourteen flights at your local skyscraper.

We’re looking for short, sharp, intense efforts. The average running section in a cross race is pretty damn short.

That’s what we’re training for.

I use a flight of stairs that takes me about 12 seconds to run up in a full sprint.

That means that when I’m doing my running efforts, I’m doing a whole bunch of little tiny sprint efforts, with little tiny recovery moments in between them, as I jog or walk back down the stairs.

Sound familiar?

Like a Cross race?