Oct 14th, 2009 by admin
Thanks to Dave Lynch for writing this review of our recent workshop at the Donadea Running Club, County Kildare, Ireland.
Dave Lynch from Donadea Running Club
The Running Inn Runners Workshop
On 26th and 27th of September, St. Kevin’s played host to The Running Inn team who travelled over from Eastbourne to run a workshop for us here at Donadea.
Running Inn (therunninginn.co.uk) do many of these courses at home and were most welcome when the very personable Mike Ovens, a former Royal Navy officer (any of the ladies who didn’t make the course – I can only apologise and see if we can get some of the fire brigade around for you another time) and Fiona Bugler, a fitness instructor and health and fitness journalist came to visit.
The day began early that Saturday with a 1500 meter run at 85% of our maximum effort to test our VO2 max – the volume of oxygen which a person’s lungs can cope with determined by a test such as this. It can be increased through regular training, and is a good indication of how much work a person is capable of, i.e. what times they could expect to run certain distances in.
85% soon felt like 100% to some of us, while others managed to breeze through the run.
Of course none of this was done without a good warm up and dynamic stretching; which is a stretching method suited to use before running. We have since added this to our own training nights.
Then the hard(er) part! Circuit training on the GAA pitch. It was one of the nicest running days for a long time so out came the stability balls (those large blue balls for Pilates and core exercises). If you don’t already have one stuffed un-inflated under your bed, you probably saw them in Tesco for under a tenner. Particularly interesting about this training was, as Mike explained, that much strength building training – like in the army/navy – doesn’t require fancy equipment and gyms and works extremely well using a person’s own bodyweight. True enough, given the evidence that much of both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig’s physical training for their roles as James Bond used army commando training techniques which rely heavily on bodyweight exercises (or Calisthenics). Although in Mr. Craig’s case obviously free weights were used. Free weights are dumbbells etc. as opposed to machines.
Why go for strength training anywhere but your legs when you are a runner? As Fiona and Mike explained, it has a lot to do with your core and how it supports your body as you run. Powerful arms and shoulders help propel runners up hills too. So don’t dismiss this as part of your training routine. If this interests you then an excellent fitness plan can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jan/07/healthandwellbeing.fitness1
Lunch came at last and Jo had really provided with plenty of bread, meat and veg for sandwiches and lots of nuts and fruit! While Mike and Fiona made the sandwiches, Daithi, Fionnuala, Paschal, Lavanna, Victoria, Hugh and myself dove hungrily on the peanuts, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. All good healthy food and an absolute joy to the taste buds after our efforts.
After some hill training on a local slope – which became the joke of the weekend – the Running Inn guys went through personalized training consultations with each of us and we all slipped off happily to our respective hot baths and couches.
News came in to us during the day that Brendan O’Dowd had done the Dublin Half Marathon in 1 hr 28 – a new club record! Well done Brendan!
Sunday started early again with a different type of VO2 test, catchilly entitled the “bleep test”. It may or may not have something to do with the amount of “bleeps” that some of us uttered when we saw what it entailed. The bleep test is basically a 20 meter distance over which the participant runs forward and back. The catch: A CD with timed bleeps is playing and the runner must get to the end of the 20 meters before the next beep. And the intermission between beeps becomes shorter and shorter! Daithi made it to an incredible 13.2, which makes him approx. 63% as fit as David Beckham who is allegedly the only person to ever complete the full test.
The day was rounded off with a long run which went well and Fiona commented on in her blog on the Running Inn website. All in all the weekend was a great experience
And one I think we would all do again. Thanks, Jo for organizing that.