Does anyone have any fun and good ideas for a group interval ?
Does anyone have any fun and good ideas for a group interval ?
Two-person postal relays.
Break the runners into teams and run relays against each other. They will run hard, have fun and get the competitive juices flowing.
This is only good for shorter intervals like quarters since rest time would be huge for longer intervals. If you're doing quarter intervals, try 3 man teams doing a five (or more) mile relay. Make the teams as even as you can.
Indian file intervals....er I mean Native American file intervals...er I mean East Asian Ice Age Emigrant file intervals.... all fvk it, Sanjay, its INDIAN FILE INTERVALS!
To make it fun, the runner in motion from the back-to-front has to imitate another runner's running form. It could be a teammate, a competitor, or even a current/historical runner. Everyone has to guess who. What we used to do in high school.
malmo wrote:
Indian file intervals....er I mean Native American file intervals...er I mean East Asian Ice Age Emigrant file intervals.... all fvk it, Sanjay, its INDIAN FILE INTERVALS!
To make it fun, the runner in motion from the back-to-front has to imitate another runner's running form. It could be a teammate, a competitor, or even a current/historical runner. Everyone has to guess who. What we used to do in high school.
This is fun...I've done this before.
Free Advice wrote:
Break the runners into teams and run relays against each other. They will run hard, have fun and get the competitive juices flowing.
This is only good for shorter intervals like quarters since rest time would be huge for longer intervals. If you're doing quarter intervals, try 3 man teams doing a five (or more) mile relay. Make the teams as even as you can.
Great option. Make sure as a coach, you make the teams a little more even. If you pair the two fastest kids on the team together, they will drop everyone. But if you pair two average kids, they have a chance against one slow and one fast kid together.
A workout from college that I really enjoyed and integrated into our high school program with success we called the "NASCAR" workout.
The group runs a constant pace throughout the entire workout. Runners file onto the track and out of the group, into a"pit stop" depending upon the length of their interval. Intervals are based upon the talent/event area/workout type. As a coach it takes some planning and explanations, but it keeps everyone in a pack throughout the workout, a great workout for a XC team with a wide range of abilities.
hamburglar wrote:
A workout from college that I really enjoyed and integrated into our high school program with success we called the "NASCAR" workout.
The group runs a constant pace throughout the entire workout. Runners file onto the track and out of the group, into a"pit stop" depending upon the length of their interval. Intervals are based upon the talent/event area/workout type. As a coach it takes some planning and explanations, but it keeps everyone in a pack throughout the workout, a great workout for a XC team with a wide range of abilities.
Interesting idea. Some kids would be doing 400s while others kids may end up with a 5 mile tempo run.
malmo wrote:
Indian file intervals....er I mean Native American file intervals...er I mean East Asian Ice Age Emigrant file intervals.... all fvk it, Sanjay, its INDIAN FILE INTERVALS!
To make it fun, the runner in motion from the back-to-front has to imitate another runner's running form. It could be a teammate, a competitor, or even a current/historical runner. Everyone has to guess who. What we used to do in high school.
Ha! I was going to suggest the same, but was afraid of the non-polical correctness. We called them Indian runs in high school, but that's Texas for you.
Sausages
txRUNNERgirl wrote:
malmo wrote:Indian file intervals....er I mean Native American file intervals...er I mean East Asian Ice Age Emigrant file intervals.... all fvk it, Sanjay, its INDIAN FILE INTERVALS!
To make it fun, the runner in motion from the back-to-front has to imitate another runner's running form. It could be a teammate, a competitor, or even a current/historical runner. Everyone has to guess who. What we used to do in high school.
Ha! I was going to suggest the same, but was afraid of the non-polical correctness. We called them Indian runs in high school, but that's Texas for you.
We called them Indian Runs too. Of course my high school was nicknamed "Indians".
We ran these as wrestling conditioning workouts.
In high school, we had one workout called "Running Roulette"
Basically, our coach had an envelope with pieces of paper that had a distance, pace and recovery. Each team member had to pick a piece of paper until the total distance equaled or exceeded 5k.
Items in the bag include things like:
400 m at mile race pace, 200 m recovery
1600 at 5k pace, 400 m recovery
Coach runs a 200 (at that would count towards the 5k)
200 in the reverse direction (clockwise)
Here is a good idea. It may be fun, but fun is not guaranteed.
Write appropriate, specific workouts for each individual in your group, and then have them perform those workouts. Base these workouts on current fitness levels and race performance.
For athletes that are closely aligned, you may find some common areas for them to work together. That is also a good thing.
3 by 200m relays with 3 people to a team with 5 min rest
1 200 per person
4 times
I will give away a "funny" group interval session for free. The fun in it is that all runners are pacemakers/ followers at the same time. All runners can start at the same spot or at different spots. All runners run the same workout f.ex 20 x 400m and at their individual pace and individual recovery easy walking until heartrate is down to 60% of MHR or down to roughly 120-125 beats per minute.
By this way soon all runners are spread all over the track and pacing/chasing each other.
It depends on how many people a "group" Is. We typically have 7 or 8 at our track work and usually we are the only ones at the track early in the morning. All masters runners of somewhat different speeds. Sometimes we'll do 400 meter intervals with the fastest person in lane 8 and down to the slowest in lane 1. After each interval we adjust lanes and starting positions based on who beat who the previous one and by how much. Makes you run faster and you can do a lot of 400's that are fun.