Seniors on the Track

It would be a mistake for senior road and country runners to think that the track had nothing to offer them. I remember John Hanratty and many other club runners training on the track at Coatbridge and Crown Point in the 80's and benefiting greatly from it - the same sessions are available on request! No one is incapable of improvement and if you train the same every year, year in and year out then you will probably not be the person to do the improving: he who trains the same, remains the same, said Frank Horwill. When I had six women from Balloch wanting to run a marathon, just the one, then I asked them to train once a week on the track at Postie's Park. They enjoyed it and they did so right up to the week before their marathon.
One of the problems of the Scottish winter is that it is so long and one of the tricks is to make the winter shorter. Adding variety does just that. Most good runners do some sort of repetition work during the winter and many, many of them do it on the track. If I were club captain in 2010, I would ask the club committee to make the training headquarters once a week at a track venue because of the options that would be opened up for training purposes - you could warm up there then do the road run, you could do a straight track session or you could do a road run then finish with a couple of fast sprints on the track.
I used to have men and women doing one track session a week from October to January, then substitute a hill session for the track running right through to the National Cross Country Championships. It just opens up so many more options to coaches and runners.