Spring in the step....

Skipping, hopping and a variety of other gaits too complex to describe were on the menu in the first of the year's "Drills" sessions with coach Bobby McGee.

Although there wasn't a trace of snow on the track, there was a nip in the air, and runners tempted into tee-shirt and shorts by yesterday's 70 degrees plus temperatures were soon shivering in the early-morning chill, despite the exertions.

Drills -- a combination of neuromuscular activations and re-wirings plus very specific strengthening and mobility exercises -- are designed to help develop the co-ordination and strength necessary to run fast with ease. It's a once-a-week session that really helps my running, so I try never to miss it, even though it involves getting up in the middle of the night to be ready to be not just awake, but capable of independent movement, at 7.30am.

I have to admit that another good motivation for me is that every time a new round of Drills kicks off we always have a fair crop of runners who last hopped, skipped and grapevined when they were very small people (if at all). Years of straight-line mono-pace training leaves some runners unable to cope with the sort of complex movements that were a piece of cake when we were children. We also usually have a smattering of triathletes who somehow manage to do Ironman events with hideously energy-expensive running styles. So in some of the exercises I get to feel like an elite decathlete or something, just because I can do them without falling over! That's until Bobby unerringly picks up on the key thing I have forgotten to do.

This week the Drills session precedes a couple of easy days before we hit the track again on Saturday for a Kosmin test. This was originally developed in Russia to predict 800 and 1500 metre times. We'll be using it to find out where we stand in terms of our sub-5 minute miling. Well, they will. I'll be using it to see just how much MORE work I have to do to be able to get anywhere near cracking 6 minutes, never mind five.

The basic plot is that you run flat out for 4 reps of one minute with descending rest periods. You drop a marker on the track at the end of each 60 seconds and start your next rep at that point. Test ends by totalling the number of metres you've covered and crunching that figure through an equation that spits out a time. From that time we (well, Bobby) can set appropriate speeds for the next month of training.

Talking at Drills to Todd, one of Bobby's Boston marathon group, he told me they'd been shocked to find out that some of us were training for the Pearl Street Mile -- which is in August. Boston, of course, is next month. Well... August doesn't seem far enough away for me at the moment. I hope I'm fit enough in time :)