David Rudisha: Typical Saturday & Sunday (Transition/Racing Period)
We spent May 2017 training with St Patrick’s athletics group in Iten, Kenya – David Rudisha’s training group.
David was there for parts of the month. He had 2 races during the month, including Shanghai Diamond League.
Nevertheless, we got down to the specifics of their training philosophies and despite David attending for only about half of the training sessions, we learnt everything about his group’s training, including base training weekly structure, strength training, speed training, race preparation workouts, and speed of recovery day runs.
Typical Saturday – Racing/Transition Period
9:00AM: Track Workout (unless it’s too wet, they will find a road that isn’t too muddy and try to replicate the workout on the road, going out and back).
This workout is always done on a dirt track. They only run on the tartan if it’s a time trial. This workout will normally endurance based, at slower than their 800m pace, but not slower than 3km pace.
A common example of this workout is 4x600m (in 1:30) and 4x400m (in 55-56) with a 200m walk recovery (about 2.5mins) between all reps.
Another example is 1x800m (in 2.10), 3x600m (in 1.30), 3x400m (in 55).
According to the group members, the most they’ll do in training is 800m on the track in this period. Usually the longest rep is 600m, but there is never a workout without a couple of 600m’s at least to get started.
One of the “hardest” reported workouts, by one of David Rudisha’s main training partners, was 3x600m (1.31, 1.30, 1.29), 3x400m (55, 55, 54), 600m max in 1.20. All with 200m walk recovery.
Normally the warm up and cool down is very, very easy (around 5:30-6min/km) and typically 15-20mins. They aren’t too specific with the exact duration/length of this. Following the warm up, 10-15mins of dynamic stretching. Post workout, 20mins of static stretching is done as a group.
PM: No Training
Sunday – Racing/Transition Period
Rest. They never run on Sundays and they fully understand the purpose of the day off.
