Firstly, thanks to Runners Tribe for approaching me, I am stoked to be able to share my training and story. Growing up I played a lot of Tennis and Hockey and somehow it took me until my 20th year to fully realise how good running can be and take it up as a sport. I had run Adelaide’s premier fun run the City-Bay multiple times but never understood or committed to structured training.
In 2015 I started participating in Parkrun events, mainly as a method of getting fit for hockey, which kickstarted the addiction and I haven’t looked back since. Here I met a number of enthusiastic Adelaide Harriers who encouraged me to come out and start training properly. Three and a half years on and I still cop it for rocking up in knee length tennis shorts.
Harriers coach David Patterson, along with other experienced members including Michael Nitschke and Peter-John Bosch, have been guiding me since and I now proudly own many pairs of short shorts. Recently I have been privileged enough to be provided with running gear from Saucony, which has been very helpful in making me look the part.
Top performances:
-10th World Cross Country Trials 2019
-3rd Launceston 10km 2018 29:26
-4th Victorian state 5000m championships 14:14
-5th (1st SA resident) City to Bay 2018 12km 35:18
8 x 1km
This classic is a staple in our training program year round. This session is often done on Tuesday and from the clubrooms, either on the grass track or out and back on ‘Patto’s path’. The recovery period is varied depending on the upcoming goal races and has tended to get shorter as I get more experienced, recently a 200m jog. When targeting shorter track races we tend to increase the recovery, often on a 5 or 4 and a half minute cycle. There can be 50+ people out for this session so we tend to all go off at the same time, to keep the group together.
16 x 400m
This session is common during track season and is designed to work on speed whilst still delivering a decent aerobic stimulus. These are often done on a 2 minute cycle and with every 4th rep intentionally quicker than the rest. These are generally done on the track at the club, or at the SA athletics stadium which is only a warm up jog from the club. These sessions are where training partner Rhys Jones, a 3:42 1500m runner gets me back for being a bit stronger in the 1km reps.
Mona Fartlek
Another classic Australian distance running session. This or other fartlek style running is generally our Thursday training.
Longer hilly reps
During winter and in the lead up to the world cross country trials we had been doing longer reps on a loop at the North Adelaide ‘horse paddocks’. This includes some trail, grass, a medium hill up the footpath and gum leaves on the way down. The idea here is to practice running on varying terrain and gradients to mimic cross country races. These sessions are often a combination of 3km, 2km and 1km reps for example: 3km, 1km, 1km, 3km or 4 x 3km. We have also done longer fartleks here such as 10 x 3’ on 1’ off.
