The Running Program

Sacfit offers great training programs for beginning, intermediate, and advanced runners.

Beginning Runners

For beginners, our program focuses on consistency. This means getting your body used to running on a regular basis – a key component to begin any running program, and a great start toward training for 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons or even full marathons.

Experienced Runners

For our intermediate and advanced runners, our program focuses on getting to the next level, whether tackling a moderate race distance for the first time (like a half marathon) or improving on speed and technique for a particular race time goal. This means engaging your body in speed and strength workouts to raise your lactate threshold and improve on running efficiency – all necessary elements to successfully increase speed sufficient to meet your goals.

But no matter which program we offer, all provide the coaching, tools and encouragement to inspire our runners to test their new found fitness and abilities at any of the numerous Springtime races in our region.

All these factors contribute toward the ultimate goal of improving fitness, speed, and endurance for any race goals you might have. But in keeping with the Sacfit philosophy, all of our programs are also designed to keep the process of getting fit a fun, enjoyable, and interesting endeavor. After all, if it’s not fun, what’s the point?

Typical Weekly Schedule

All Sacfit programs are designed to consider the busy schedules of our lives. While some adjustment and priority must be made for any new undertaking, our programs ensure that you will not be consumed by workouts. Following is our typical weekly schedule:

  • Monday – Recovery Workout
  • Tuesday – Specialized Workout – Hill Repeats, Stairs, and Intervals
  • Wednesday – Rest Day for beginning runners; Recovery Workout for advanced runners
  • Thursday – Specialized Workout – Pace and Tempo
  • Saturday – Long workout
  • Sunday – Rest day

The mid-week workouts consist of shorter duration or mileage runs. These workouts increase in time and distance over the season. For Tuesdays, we provide workouts for hill repeats, stairs, and interval segments, and for Thursdays, we offer workouts for pace and tempo training.

The Saturday morning  is the “long” workout. Beginning runners start at 30 to 40 minutes, Intermediate 4 to 5 miles, and our advanced runners 5 to 6 miles. Then, over the course of the program, the duration and mileages gradually increase as you move toward your goal race distance.

That’s three supervised workouts each week to provide you optimal motivation!

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Pace Groupings

The most important component to sensible and safe training is not pushing too hard too soon. In running, that’s finding the right pace. In order to find the right pace for you, we conduct a Pace Finder run at the start of the season. The Pace Finder run is not a race. Rather, it is easygoing run or walk (or both) at a pace that is comfortable enough for you to carry on a conversation throughout the run or walk.

As you complete your run or walk – anywhere from one to two miles, you record your time and heart rate. Your time determines your pace group, which we assign as color groups – Blue, Green, Gold or Red. And from there the fun begins…