Work out - Fast session - Progression run

A fast session I really enjoy is a progression run, it's quite fun to plan out how you'd work up to a fast pace and then keep an eye on your watch to slowly ratchet up the pace over around 8km.

Example progression run
The screenshot above shows an example progression run. A few points below:
  1. The warm up isn't quite as important for this session as the first couple of km are at a reasonably comfortable pace.
  2. As it's not as intense, as say an interval session, I'd suggest running a little further - maybe 8km or 10km.
  3. Plan a sensible route, no major roads to cross in the last 2-3km. Measure it out on a tool like Strava Route Builder so you know how far it is.
  4. Plan to finish at your race pace, then work the calculations back to make sure you jump up in pace ever 0:10/km each km. So in the example above, to finish at 3:50/km pace the initial km was at 5:00/km pace. Finishing hard mimics a race where you want to give everything for the last 1-2 km to finish strongly.
  5. At the end, do a short warm down for 1-2km to relax the body.
If you are doing two fast sessions a week - then a progression run such as this is a nice session to have up your sleeve.

This blog post is part of a set of posts looking at how to run faster:

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