The 55th running of the Chattanooga Chase is already under 3 months away! If you haven't already, now is a great time to start training especially with longer days and beautiful spring weather ahead of us!
To help us all get ready for the big race, our very own staffer Cory has put together a training plan to help you master the hills of the historic Riverview neighborhood. (For those of you who don't know, Cory finished in the top 5 in the 2021 race, so he knows what he's doing!) This is a perfect training plan whether it's your first year running or you're looking for a PR this year.
Our own team is going to do open training runs every Thursday from now until the race that follows this plan. We welcome all levels of experience and pacing to join us. You can join us for a warmup run from the shop to the Riverview Park at 6 p.m. or meet us at the Riverview Park at 6:20 p.m.
If you would rather do it on your own, we will post more details about each week's training to the Chattanooga Chase social media and on this page. You can do these out on the course or do a version somewhere else you prefer.
We look forward to seeing you out there!
Week 1
- Easy run of the Chattanooga Chase course
Week 2
- Sandwedge Loop warm-up
- 5-10x 1-minute fartlek* anywhere on course
- Sandwedge cool-down
Week 3
- Warm-up to bottom of Woodhill
- 3-8x pickup** to top
- Cool-down back to Riverview Park
Week 4
- Sandwedge warm-up
- Course run with pickup every incline
- Sandwedge cool-down
Week 5
- Sandwedge warm-up
- 3-5x Sandwedge mile
- 3-8 min rest
- Sandwedge cool-down
Week 6
- Full course run
Week 7
- Sandwedge warm-up
- Fartlek on the course
- 1 min push, 30 sec off
- 2 min push, 1 min off
- 3 min push, 90 sec off
- 4 min push, 2 min off
- 3 min push, 90 sec off
- 2 min push, 1 min off
- 1 min push, 30 sec off
- Sandwedge cooldown
Week 8
- Warm-up to Minnekahda
- 2-5x pickup to top
- Cooldown to park
Week 9
- Sandwedge warm-up
- 4-6 min moderate effort (just a little slower than race pace) 3-5x through course. Rest after each for 1 min.
- 5 min try to reach same spot
Week 10
- Sandwedge warm-up
- 5k moderate run on chase course
- Sandwedge cool-down
Week 11
- Full course run
Week 12
- Raceday on Monday, May 30th!
*Fartlek: "speed play" in Swedish; essentially unstructured speedwork. When doing fartlek training, you will generally want to push your speed for a determined amount of time and then pull back on speed (enough to bring HR down) for half the amount of time. For example, if you do a 2-minute fartlek, you will push your speed for 2 minutes and pull it back for 1 minute to recover.
**Pick-up: push speed running uphill, slow jog or walk down back to the bottom to recover