Pre-season Running Session: Week #4 (July 20-July 25)

Hey Everyone:

I'm going to go over your running logs in the next couple of days, so make sure you're logging your minutes. Here are a few things to go over regarding this week:

• We're going to increase our running from 3-4 days to 5 days this week, with a sixth day of cardio. 
• The volume of the runs will continue to increase gradually, so you won't be running a lot more miles. It's gradual, but be ready for the first day of practice as we're going to continue to increase the volume and intensity. 
• If you want to go a little faster, try increasing your speed on the last 25% of your longer runs (most likely Wednesday's run). For example, if you're going to run 28 minutes, run at the same pace for the first 75% of the run (21 minutes), then increase your speed on the last 25% (7 minutes) of that run. Again, this is only if you feel like you can--it's not required at this point.
• Try to keep the shorter days light, even though you may think they're easy. Make those your recovery days.
• The last day of your training this week should be a minimum of 30 minutes of sustained cardio. This can be any form of cardio (elliptical, bike ride, swimming, playing another sport, etc.). Just log the activity and the time.
• Stay hydrated!

Here's this week's running times:

• Monday         22 - 32 minutes
• Tuesday         10 - 15 minutes
• Wednesday   18 - 28 minutes
• Thursday       10 - 15 minutes
• Friday            10 minutes 
• Saturday       30 minutes sustained (uninterrupted) cardio

These times are listed as a range of times, you can pick a time in between (for example if you decide to run 16 minutes continuously you can run 8 minutes out and 8 minutes back).

Good luck, keep up the good work and don't forget to log your minutes! We'll update the log and send that to you.