Striders of Croydon AC

Monday
Rest day

Tuesday
Interval Training – there are two parallel sessions:-

One at Croydon Arena . Meet at the Arena by 7.15pm to warm up, stretch and two laps of ‘strides’ in time for a 7.30pm start. Sessions split into quick and not so quick groups for speed work/repetitions. An essential training component for anyone seeking a significant improvement in their PB times. See latest monthly schedule for details. Sessions last about 40 minutes.

The other from the clubhouse with an emphasis on hill training. This is in Lloyd Park in the summer and on the roads round Sandilands in the winter. Again meet in time for a 7:30 start - sessions are about 40 minutes.

Wednesday
The largest run of the week leaves the club house at 7:30 usually as two groups. The faster group for those who can manage 10K in less than 45 minutes the slower group for the rest. Both groups run for an hour but split to allow a 40 minute run. In the summer months this is mainly off road, in the winter months it is on the roads around South Croydon, Sanderstead, Selsdon and Shirley.

Wednesday is also the main opportunity to meet for a drink in the clubhouse afterwards.

Thursday
Swimming – we hire the pool at Trinity School for an hour at 8:30. All club members are welcome to come along at a cost of £5 a session. Our resident coach sets drills and sessions based on your ability. For some this is an opportunity to improve swimming skills, for others an additional opportunity to keep fit and for others training for tri-athlons. Club members compete in various Duathlon & triathlon events during the year.

We also provide short-distance sessions at Croydon Arena on Thursday evenings.

These sessions start at 7pm. Please meet at the Arena by 6.45 if possible to allow adequate warm-up.

Our winter sessions are aimed at practising race pace for 800 and 1500 metre races, and include sessions of 200metre repetitions with a very short recovery, and regular fast ‘time-trials’ over distances ranging from 300m to a mile. From April to August we change the emphasis to include repetitions of 250m and below with a longer recovery.

Friday
The social run - a more leisurely run of 40 minutes at the pace of the slowest runner. Beginners with very limited running experience are welcome to this run. Depending on numbers there will usually be a separate group running at a faster pace and looping back as necessary. Both runs start at 7 p.m.

Saturday
No official sessions but many members take in a local 5k parkrun. During the XC season (Oct-Feb) regular races take place on Saturday afternoons.

Sunday
Sundays – 8.30am – Generally a slow off-road run through the parkland and woods heading south out of Croydon. It is possible to travel from Lloyd Park out into the Kent and Surrey countryside and in doing so you will rarely see a road. The run normally splits into two groups after about 30 to 40 minutes so that those who only want to run for an hour can return to the Clubhouse and those who want to run for 90 minutes plus can continue. During the London Marathon training season, a number of runners split into a further dedicated group which aims to incrementally build up long slow road mileage from early January, starting with an hour and increasing to around 3 hours by early April.