David Rudisha Training: Typical Tuesday (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 Tuesday
9:00AM: Track Workout (unless it’s too wet, the same workout moves to “the slope” – a road hill)
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 be at 800m race pace, or slightly quicker. An example we joined in for was 10x200m with 3-4min rest. The goal for the track workout for the 800m runners, was to run them in 23-24sec for as long as possible. The day we joined in, the track was too muddy to run on, so we replicated the workout on “the slope” and aimed for 28sec (around 23-24sec effort).
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
