St Kilda coach Alan Richardson was pleased with the state of the list at Linen House Centre, with a large portion of the players producing strong performances in the three-kilometre time trial at Caulfield Park on Wednesday.

Workhorse midfielder Jarryn Geary led the field home in a hard fought affair, narrowly holding off aerobic animals Sean Dempster and Jack Newnes to take line honours and reclaim the endurance crown at the Saints.

“Of the 31 that did the time trial, we had 20 that either matched or bettered their best time so that’s a real indication that the guys did the work. Those that missed out only did so marginally. So (it was) positive,” Richardson told saints.com.au on Thursday.

“We had a few guys not do the test but still ran pretty strongly (away from the main group). Riewoldt’s a good example – he’s been away so he didn’t actually do the time trial, but he’s certainly doing some work early.”

Following the Christmas break, the Saints move into the third phase of their pre-season campaign, with the focus shifting towards more game related conditioning and football specific training as the season draws closer.

With the first NAB Challenge game against North Melbourne only 44 days away, Richardson explained that the intensity gauge would rise a notch or two in the month of January.

“It’s a real step up for the players. We’ve broken the pre-season down into three phases – two of them are gone," Richardson said.

So in this next six weeks, we have nine significant training sessions until the end of January and then the guys have four days off.

“So the running capacity with ball in hand will step up, the flat out running will start to diminish somewhat, and more footy running will kick in.

The physicality will ramp up, the pressure we put on the person with the ball to make sure we’re executing and transferring to the game – that will all start to ramp up now."