Winter Training

Following up on a chat at the weekend at Grangemouth, if you read a book on Training Theory you will get the winter translated into Preparation Periods One and Two. If you go back to pre training theory as such the winter was regarded as Strength and Conditioning. The differences were (a) that the words nowadays are bigger and (b) guys who are good coaches tend not to be good scientists and the result is that they lose some of their way by trying to be too clever. In the 1980's I had a particularly good squad with John Hanratty, Charlie McIntosh, Alex Gilmour, Graeme Getty, Shug Forgie and others all working hard all winter. The Wednesday night at Coatbridge was long reps and because they helped each other through difficult sessions it gave them a wee edge over the opposition. From October to Christmas they all did hill sesions on a Monday wherever they lived - wee Eck in Hamilton Maryhill guys in Cleveden Road our lot at Thomson Street. The Thomson Street session was simple. In early October there were five reps on the hill with five strides on the car park at the top and then five more reps on the hill plus five reps in the car park This built up until we were doing ten times the hill + ten times the car park twice every Monday. After New Year it was into what would now be called Preparation Period Two with the hill session turning into 200 metre reps on grass on an island on the Boulevard. I had Alex Gilmour coming from Hamilton and Shug from Carluke for these sessions some weeks! The Wednesday stayed constant. Sunday runs were longer with Alex only doing about 15 but fairly fast while most of the rest did about two hours. Results were quite good - Alex had pb's of 64+ for the half marathon and 14:04 for 5000 on the track.
All comments welcome!