Hurdling in Swindon

Met up with my hurdles coach and a few other masters hurdlers in Swindon on Saturday morning for a great two hour session

As usual in Swindon, the weather was kind to us and kept bright all morning.
Hurdling sessions at this year provide several benefits.
Firstly, the obvious one, they help with the actual skill of hurdling. Its very difficult to train on your own, but when you have several pairs of experienced eyes watching you it really helps.
The second benefit is the stamina aspect. 400m hurdling is all about maintaining technique under fatigue. So we always have a part of the session that stresses us.

Today we spent 30 mins or so doing various drills over various heights with various spacing between. The goal is to get us comfortable hurdling off either leg.
I have decided to get back over proper height hurdles (3 foot) as I've been messing around with lower ones and I don't think they are helping, just lulling me into a false sense of security.

After the technique work we spent time running relaxed over the first 3 hurdles. I was running about 18 strides (much slower than my race pace of 16) which is pretty relaxed!

Finally, we moved on to the stamina work. 4 x first 5 hurdles with 5 minute recovery.
I attacked all the hurdles to try and keep my momentum up.
I was very pleased to run all 4 at roughly the same pace (29/29/28/28) which equates to about 60 seconds for the full 400. Not bad at this stage of the season. What I'm lacking in speed I make up for in stamina. The speed will come.
The good news is that I'm faster than I was this time last year.