Breathing, stride length and pump those arms

Saturday morning was our bi-weekly Petts Wood Runners track training session. This week led by super coach Peter B. With 10 of us turning out we were ready to run, following Peter with some techniques to improve our speed.

The new techniques we practised were in summary: 
1. Work on breathing out.
2. Working on using your arms to drive your legs remember, forwards and back and not across the body.
3. Extending the stride at the end of a race.
Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint something that is improving your speed but as we added these techniques we ran 400m timed laps, I managed to knock 10 seconds off the first lap time when adding the new techniques so I was pretty pleased and will do as advised and start trying to bring them into my other runs during the week. Hopefully in two weeks when we are back at the track I may even know a few seconds off my 1km timed run.
The track sessions are so good, I really feel the benefits and as a few of us discussed many of us hadn't run on a tracks since we were at school. In my case I think that was perhaps a one off at the Don valley Stadium (Sheffield) when it first opened so it still feels a bit special and it makes you want to perform. For £3.50 and improved times I am certainly not complaining!