At Bodyline Fitness we reguarly have clients who are training for 3 or 5km races, whether it be a first-time charity fun run or a more serious race to improve a personal best. So, in this blog post i will advise on training tips with the intention of giving you a few ideas of how to prepare, rather than a detailed training programme.
Firstly, make sure you have the right running shoes, so take the time to visit a running shoe shop and have the staff look at your walking/running style so they can advise the best shoe for you; this is crucial to an injury free training programme.
Whether it’s your first race/charity run where the whole idea is to just finish or you are an experienced runner looking to improve your time the principal behind the training is very similar: Interval Training.
If you are a beginner or inexperienced your aims should be to:
- Get out approx 3 times per week increasing your training time outdoors over a 6-8 week period
- Start with the “Walk-Jog” method eg walk for 1 min then jog for 1 min or whatever time period you feel happy with
- Make these training sessions last for 25-30mins each time
- Gradually decrease the walking period and increase the jogging/running period
- Eventually spend as much of the 25-30min session jogging/running as possible
Key points to remember:
- Pick routes with as much soft, even short grass as possible, and with an incline/small hill or two
- Take a bottle of water with you
- Train with a friend; you can motivate each other
- Record each session to monitor your improvements
If you are a more experienced Runner your aims should be to:
- Train 3 times per week minimum over a 6-8 week period
- Have 3 types of routes: hills, speed intervals and long distance and do one of each per week
- For your Hills session find a hill/incline that takes 45-90 secs to run up, then walk down the other side, repeat this 6-10 times
- For your Speed Intervals find a flatter route that is approx 1 mile round and run 3-4 of these with a 3 min rest inbetween each one. (Local park could be good for this one)
- For your Long Distance session find a route that is just a bit further than race distance, with a small hill or two included
Key points to remember:
- Record your times to montior improvement
- On the hills and speed interval sessions push yourself really hard on the running phases
These are my suggestions, but they are by no means the only way to train for a 5km race so please feel free to email me your experiences and ideas of what may have worked for you. If you would like a personalised training schedule please feel free to email info@bodylinestudios.co.uk or call me on 07921 777477 so we can arrange an appointment for you
Enjoy your training,
All the best
Roy