Welcome to XSNRG Running Club

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To all XSNRG members & guests

May is Membership month. Sign up for another great year of running.
Join our runs, join our club!

Happy running,
~XSNRG Running Club

running man

The Next Workout

Stratheden

Tuesday Night @ 6:30pm | April 2, 2024

8 x 3/4 loop
(1/4 loop for recovery)
710m per loop

location

The Meeting Place

Leaside High School
We meet inside.
Enter at the East Entrance next to the parking lot
and go down one flight of stairs.

temperature

The Weather

-2.6°C

FEELS LIKE °C

  • W 7.2 KM/HR
  • Toronto, ON
X-S-N-R-G = excess energy!

XSNRG is a running club that provides runners of all levels weekly club led interval training to develop strength, stamina, and speed, in a supportive and social environment. From beginners to accomplished competitive runners, no one is too slow or too fast to run with XSNRG – all you need is the desire to train and improve your running!

Structured workouts will help you improve, but they are not always easy to do on your own. Our Tuesday night workouts, led by instructors, make it easy, give you company, and help keep you motivated with your running.

Meeting Locations The club meets in the Leaside area every Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. and runs to a different workout location each week, focusing either on speed intervals or hill training. A typical workout includes a warm-up, cool-down, running tips on technique and the workout, and is usually finished by 8:00 p.m.



  • May through September: Sunnybrook Park in the Sports Pavilion parking lot on the upper fields
  • October through April: Leaside High School


NO ONE is too slow or too fast to run with XSNRG. All that is needed is the desire to run with others and to improve. Join us for our Tuesday Night Workouts … you’ll have fun and improve your running – all because of XSNRG’s workouts!

If you are able to run at least 6 to 8 km, you are ready to come out and increase your endurance, power and speed with XSNRG.

About the Workouts
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Every Tuesday evening @ 6:30 pm sharp the club leaves as a group for a warmup jog to a different weekly workout run.

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Workouts are organized and led by club run leaders and consist of running intervals and will vary weekly from hills to speed.

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Stretches, warmups and cool downs start and finish every workout.

Club News

running icon April 23, 2019

Membership Night May 28

Join us for the 2019/2020 XS Membership night at the Amsterdam Pub after the May 28th workout. Watch for the Evite being emailed out ...

soon.

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running icon April 16, 2019

Strides for Strokes Race Discount

Mackenzie Health will be running an event on May 4th for Strides for Strokes. It's a 5K walk/run through the streets of Richmond Hill and Vaughan to raise funds for ...

Mackenzie Health.

Strides for Stroke is a fun, healthy way to support enhanced patient care at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, the future Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital and the York Region District Stroke Centre Program at Mackenzie Health.

They are offering a promo code to save $15 off registration.
PROMO CODE: Running Club

https://mhf.akaraisin.com/ui/strides2019/pledge/registration/start. Please feel free to contact Laura Lai at laura.lai@mackenziehealth.ca for any questions.

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running icon March 25, 2019

Water Station Volunteers needed for the Sporting Life 10K

The organizers of the Sporting Life 10k on Sunday May 12th want to know if XSNRG wants to (1) earn the club some money for bringing people to work at the 7k water station ...

downtown (near the Sheraton hotel) and (2) by doing so, assist Camp Oochigeas, the camp for kids with cancer. Organizers know that having RUNNERS such as our club work at the station will mean a higher degree of professionalism and efficiency than that from the high school kids who will round out the numbers at it. Organizers plan on having 100 volunteers at this station.

This race will have 23,000 runners pass the station over two hours (at the Scotiabank race that we work at, a total of 17,000 in the half and full pass by... the 8,000 in the 5k don't).

Allan Williams from the club is in charge of this 7K station which is on York St between Adelaide and Richmond. To prepare drinks for 23,000 runners, volunteers need to start early so the arrival time at the station will be 5:45AM. The race starts at 7:30am for the first corral of about 3000 and corrals go every 25 min. or so until 9am. Staggering the times means less chaos from masses trying to get drinks at once and a steadier flow of runners.

The last runners should pass the station shortly after 10am but by then some tables will already be down and the clean-up started. You should be out of there about 11AM or earlier.

All club members, family, friends can volunteer but must be high school age or older. If anyone has high school kids who need volunteer hours, they are most welcome, AND they’ll be given two extra volunteer hours to cover their travel time.

Yes May 12th is Mother’s Day but there’s a good chance your mother doesn’t want to see you before 11am that day (give her a break, she deserves a sleep-in!... take her to brunch or dinner) so come out and help the club and the race!

Parking: we always urge people to carpool of course but remember that on Sundays it’s free parking in designated street parking spots until 1pm so you’ll be good for the morning. We’ll get some parking suggestions to you later.

The process is easy…. EMAIL Michael Brennan to confirm your attendance, providing names, email addresses and T-shirt sizes of each volunteer who comes with you. He’ll make the initial list of those from the club who can help. Race volunteer coordinator, Melanie Edwards, will send more info as race day approaches so she must have a way of getting that info to each volunteer.

Please contact Michael asap at: michaelbrennan@sympatico.ca

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running icon February 12, 2019

(Freezing) Rain Date - Hot Chocolate Night Moved To February 19th

Due to the inclement weather and probable low turnout, we'll be postponing tonight's (February 12th) Hot Chocolate Night to next week (February ...

19th).

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running icon September 18, 2018

Guest appearance @ Terry Fox Run in Kelowna B.C.

Darrell Fox, younger brother to Terry Fox and a former member of XSNRG, made an appearance at the 2018 Terry Fox in Kelowna, B.C.
He is joined by Joan and Mary ...

(sisters of Dan L) after the run. Darrell says hi to XSNRG!

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running icon May 15, 2018

Membership Night: May 29

You're invited to XSNRG's annual membership night, right after the last Tuesday run in May (the 29th @ 8pm).

We're trying out a couple of new things this year. ...

Instead of our usual haunt, we'll be dining at local Leaside eatery, the Amsterdam Barrel House (on Laird Dr., by Longo's). The club will have the upstairs room for the event. And instead of having a pre-ordered meal at a set price for everyone, each club member will order off the menu and pay for their own meal, but the club will contribute $10 toward each member's meal.

You can pay for this coming year's membership of $50 at the same time.

And there's lots of free parking in the plaza.

See you there!

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Image Gallery

Coaches Corner

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The Science of ABCs

The Science of the ABCs

There really is more to our routine warm-up than an opportunity to catch up with folks on the events of the past week. When we are doing the ABCs we are really getting ourselves ready to run - and run at our best. We have often talked about using these warm-up exercises to practice our running stride and this in fact is what happens. I recently came upon an article written by Lance Watson (Triathlete Magazine, January 2007) who wrote on the same thing and so I want to share some of this with you.

Posture and fitness are two of the main components of a good stride and running is mostly about the efficiency of our stride. We can focus on and improve our stride by using the ABCs to form a strong foundation for a smooth, dynamic running stride. The following information is taken from the article by Lance Watson as referenced above. For a complete version of the article go to www.triathletemag.com and see the January 2007 edition.

The As
The focus of this exercise is to get the hip flexors firing. The hip flexors are the muscles at the front of the hips and need to work efficiently in a rhythmic and dynamic manner as it is our leg speed and our turnover that are driven from the hips. As out legs tire in a race and our quads become more fatigued, we have to rely more heavily on the hip flexors to keep the legs moving us forward.

To perform the A we need to start with checking our posture - stand tall and drive the thigh upwards much like trying to bounce a soccer ball into the air off the front/top of the thigh. Try to compress the hip joint to just over 90 degrees - raising the leg to a point where the knee is slightly above the hip and the thigh. Focus on driving the thigh upwards with force, and then return the foot to the ground and repeat with the opposite leg. If need be you can start doing these with a small skipping step which will allow for a split-second rest phase between upward drives. Progress can be made when you are to a point where you can do these in a manner than resembles running on the spot with high knees and quick feet. Make sure you keep your knees travelling in a straight up and down motion and that they do not angle outward. A common mistake is to drop the chest slightly during the knee lift or to rotate the torso. Both of these moves will shorten the length of the contraction of the hip flexor and decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of the A.

The Bs
This is often the most challenging of the three 'techniques' as it requires the most coordination. The Bs help us to retract the leg and get the foot down directly below us to keep our centre of gravity in place and to help us run "over our feet". Getting our feet down quickly and directly under us eliminates the common error of over striding and facilitates the development of a light, quick foot fall.

After lifting your knee in a similar manner as in the A drill, extend your leg until it is almost straight in front of you (and parallel to the ground) and then pull your foot back towards the ground. The focus here is on your foot - getting it out in front of you and then driving it back down to the ground and having it land directly under you. The ball of your foot should strike the ground under your centre of gravity. When the foot is coming down to the ground, focus on achieving some acceleration of the foot (your leg will follow) and skim the ground as if you are trying to scrape some mud off the bottom of your shoe.

As with the As it is important that you avoid dropping your chest and rotating your torso. To compensate and help with this tendency, think about standing tall and keeping your shoulders back. Don't fully extend your leg or lock your knee at the extension point. Keep the motion fluid.

The Cs (aka Butt Kicks)
The focus of the Cs is to increase our cadence and as a result help us build speed (that's what these workouts are all about, isn't it?). In this phase, which is the 'recovery' phase of the stride, we want to actually kick our own butts or get as close to them as possible without doing damage or injury. Again we need to focus on standing tall, not moving from side to side, and brining our feet straight up behind us, not allowing our toes and feet to rotate outwards. Your feet should stay in line with your shin and your knee. This is a good time to note whether one foot rises farther and more easily than the other which, if it does, could indicate an issue with flexibility imbalance.

Putting it all together
As we have mentioned many times, these three drills are focussing on and developing the components of our running stride and as such each component part must be isolated and practiced to result in overall increase in speed and efficiency. We "put it all together" when, after isolating the component parts, we do our interval runs or "striders". Just as with any sport you need to focus on and improve the basic component parts before putting them together in the actual activity.

I trust this helps with your understanding of a part of our weekly warm up activity at XS and as the understanding increase and the parts get easier, the results will be seen during the workouts and in competition.

Happy running - Tim Klassen

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Contact Us
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General Enquiries

Jana Marshall

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Socials

David Muirhead

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Technical Enquiries

Ed Wong