The other evening I was searching online for challenging training runs, in the hope of adding a bit of variety to my summer running. One of the workouts I found was called “Royal Air Force Repeats” – a favorite of Steve Jones, who just happens to be one of my all time heroes of running.
The workout consists of 4 x 5 minutes of running on grass with a 2 minute recovery between each hard effort. During the winter and spring, Jones rarely set foot on a track. Instead, he chose to perform his quality workouts on grass which kept his legs fresher for the summer season of track races:
For many years little of my work was done on the track, even though I was racing on the track and did some workouts on the track. It was just much more beneficial for me not to have the stress of trying to run 60-second quarters, or 2:08s or 2:06s (for 800m), even though I was probably running that pace in this workout. It wasn’t a measured distance; what was measured was the time. I was squeezing 60 seconds into a minute.
I love the last sentence of Jones’ quote – I was squeezing 60 seconds into a minute. – just typical Jones.
Anyway, back to the challenging workouts I was searching for. It turns out the “Royal Air Force Repeats” are featured in the great book Running Tough by Michael Sandrock, first published in 2001. Running Tough features 75 challenging training runs/workouts by running experts Steve Jones, Bill Rodgers, Libbie Hickman, Frank Shorter, Arthur Lydiard, Ron Clarke, Emil Zatopek, Roger Bannister and many more.
You’ll love the names of the workouts too: Agony Hill by Kip Keino, Culpepper’s Ladder by Shayne Culpepper, Wetmore’s Secret Intervals by Adam Goucher, Montana Cone to Cone by Shannon Butler just to name a few.
I ordered the book on the weekend and the good old UPS man delivered it this afternoon. Should make for some interesting bedtime reading and many hours of summer fun….