Track Strides
- Develops speed and serves as race-pace practice
- A session for the track
Performing a series of strides on the track is a good way of breaking up a longer run while getting in race-pace practice in a track environment.
The Session
It's natural to divide a running track into 4 × 100-meter sections and striding 100 meters on the straights and jogging 100 meters for recovery round the bends can work well for strides performed at 1500m–5k pace.
When running faster than 1500-meter pace, 100 metres can be a little too far to stride and jogging 100 meters for recovery will probably not be sufficient. So, for faster paces, it's better to walk the recovery.
An alternative when performing faster strides is to include a full lap jog recovery.
Variations
Stride Bends
An alternative to the sessions described above is to jog the straights and stride the bends. This can be helpful if you race on the track, where it's important to be able to run both the straights and bends well.
Clockwise Strides
Carry out your session running in a clockwise direction rather than the traditional counter-clockwise direction that's expected on the track. Many track runners find that they suffer imbalances due to continually turning left. While it's important to simulate racing in training, it's also important to include variety.
Vary the session even more by hitting a range of different race paces. E.g. a few laps with strides at 5000-meter pace, a few laps with strides at 1500-meter pace, then 3000-meter pace and so on.
