Specificity, specificity, specificity..

I am so happy and proud of the University of Manchester cross country team who produced some excellent results at the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) cross country championships on Saturday wirtes Jackie Newton UKA L3 Endurance Coach.

The event took place at the University of Gloucester and, from before Christmas, we were fairly sure that we could expect mud, mud, glorious mud on the course.  I was also aware that several members of the team had struggled on the mud in the local area cross country races and so our next block of training needed to be specific to the surface of this major race and incorporate plenty of running in the mud around the parks and playing fields in Manchester.

Access to good trainng areas isn't very easy in the area of Manchester, where we are based. We have no hills and *we are not allowed on the playing fields (or even around the edge of them) if there has been any rain and we've had plenty of that this winter!! For the first part of the cross country season most of our sessions were on the roads but it is a mistake to think that we can train on a firm surface, like the road, and race well in the mud. Running in mud requires specific strength, including lateral and core strength as well as balance and good proprioception. It was time to look for alternative training areas and plan sessions that would simulate the racing conditions.

We train on a Monday night and a Wednesday afternoon. The Wednesday afternoon session was quite easy to move and we went just over the road to Platts Fields where, we not only have mud but also the luxury of two bumps (I'm not sure I can call them hills although one of them does take a good 20 seconds to run up!) The session we ran was aimed at developing the ability to 'change gear' on the mud on any given gradient. We set a loop for the runners to lap around and pick up the pace for 30 seconds at a time, on a whistle. Every effort was 30 seconds but the recovery changed. After the first one it was 90 seconds and then came down by 15 seconds each time, so...90, 75, 60, 45, 30, 15 (phew! That 15 second recovery felt short!) and then back to 90. We repeated the sequence five times in all.

Monday night was not so easy because of the lack of lighting. A couple of weeks ago we met at Cringle Fields. I hadn't had time to go down there to have a look so had used Google Earth to check it out. I mistakenly thought that the street lights would shed enough light onto the edge of the field but I was wrong and so our session was run in the dark as well as the mud. It was good for proprioception training though as the runners feet had to cope with adjusting to feel as they planted then into the ground. That particular session was 4/5 X 4 minutes with a 'negative split' on each effort. The runners ran out for 2 minutes at a fast pace and then were challenged to come back faster and get past the point where they had started.

So, how did we do and did it make a difference? Well, I would like to think it did make a difference. Some of the runners who had been disappointed with previous results on the mud ran very well on Saturday and we got our best team results since I started coaching the team in 2009. Our women finished a fabulous 5th behind Birmingham, St. Mary's, Loughborough and Edinburgh and the men finished 18th. The best previous results were women 10th and men 11th in 2004. The men finished 17th in 2007 but, since then, have been outside the top twenty.

I am so proud of the team and how they stepped up for this event! Of course, it wasn't just the last block of training that has made the difference. This team have been training with dedication since they came to the university and some before that with their clubs and coaches at home.

Moving forward, we will endeavour to make our training as specific for our target races as we possibly can. Not only does it prepare the runners physically but it develops confidence that they can run on anything as long as they have done the work in training.

 

 

 

*It feels somewhat ironic (and dare I say frustrating) to be in a situation where we need to get used to mud and wet, to simulate race conditions, but we're only allowed on the fields if it's firm and dry. One of the reasons given is health and safety - but we need to get used to this surface to race on it!!