maintaining speed endurance in these weather conditions

As UK athletes on this site must know we are having some crazy freezing and snowy weather conditions ! due to this my group and I are missing quite a few speed and speed endurance sessions as we prepare for indoors as it is too cold to run at that kind of pace. i was just wondering if anyone else is having this problem and what you guys are doing instead?? at the moment we have just dropped the sessions to about 80% and supplementing some sessions with gym or circuits. what are you opinions guys?

How far is the closest indoor track? Tyler Christopher apparently won world indoors in the 400m off of nothing longer than split 80s run on an indoor straight.

probably lee valley, its about 30 minute drive from where I live. I can always detour there on the way back from uni which is about an extra 10-15 minutes but im not sure what roads are like around there. How would you structure a session for speed endurance with only 80m straight Robin? would it be something like a high volume with little recovery?

Depends on your event. Turn-around 60s- or 80s if you have the room can do nicely, even if you can only do them once a week. 2 to 4 reps in a set with 2 to three sets should cover up to 400m for a faster athlete. (Believe me, if you go out at a good pace, they will kick your ass!!)

Charlie, how similar is this to a gasser in terms of the turnaround? Is it touch and go or do you take a little break between reps? The way you described it sounds very similar to the “upbacks” that Dan prescribes, run 70-100, quick u-turn and run back. Same idea?

Assuming you have a reasonable distance to stop at the end of the track. Our track had 30m to stop after the 60m before to were at the wall. You could run the 60 and decelerate to the wall, then immediately turn around and run from the wall to a mark or cone set 30m up from the 60m start, slow to the start line, turn around and repeat for the number of reps you have planned. Breaks were complete between set- often 20min.

we were doing similar stuff like this in our last 6 week block but a bit further and with a bit more reovery between reps ( back to back 100s 4 sets of 4 reps with 30secs between reps and 4 mins between sets) would this give the same result as doing say a speed endurance sessions of maybe 120s ?

we were doing similar stuff like this in our last 6 week block but a bit further and with a bit more reovery between reps ( back to back 100s 4 sets of 4 reps with 30secs between reps and 4 mins between sets) would this give the same result as doing say a speed endurance sessions of maybe 120s ?

I believe it was split runs, as described in Charlie’s post above. Lee Valley has a 140m straight and a 200m indoor track anyway. It’s a great facility, and I wish I lived or worked as close to it as you do. I used to drive 45min to the Brunel indoor track up to twice a week and sometimes even took the 1:30h drive to Lee Valley for training purposes. I would expect the roads to be clear there.

oh really where abouts do you live? yeh ive discussed it with my coach andme and my group are going to go down there tomorrow afternoon for speed session and most likely on thursday aswell

In Oxford.

I’m from the UK also (Blackpool) and we have been in the same situation.

We have a 60m indoor track and we have just been putting our sessions into split runs.

I.e as a 400m group on sunday we did 500,400,300,200,100

So we split that into 50m reps so 1 lap i.e there and back is 100m

So 10 laps rest 3 mins
8 laps rest 3 mins
6 laps rest 3 mins
4 laps etc etc back to 100m

Not ideal but better than not training!

i havent done se since the turn of the year, just accel and max v.