10k training advice / plan review

--amadeus--

Hi folks,

I've got a bit of a gap between now and starting my next full marathon training program so I thought I'd try and focus on the Clare 10k at the end of June.

Up till now I've only trained for marathons so I'm not sure what to do for the shorter distance. Plan at the moment is:

Endurance: I've just done a marathon so this should be the easy bit. Planning one "long" run per week of 6 - 10 miles at just under race pace

Speed Endurance: Slightly harder, maintaining pace over distance. I'm thinking 2 tempo runs per week, 4 - 6 miles as close to race pace as possible?

Speed: Hardest of all. Intervals for marathons have been 600m and up. I assume for a 10k I need to be looking at 400 - 600m reps, hills and fartlek, 2 sessions per week?

That leaves me training 5 days, with 2 rest. One worry is that it's all quite intense, no real hard / easy pattern. Any advice?

Thanks!

Peckham

I'm in a similar situation, and normally only follow specific plans for marathon. However, am following a plan in the lead-up to the Achill Half at the moment. Took the plan from The Lore of Running book. It's a Pfitzinger plan, so I have a lot of confidence in it!

In terms of speed it alternates weeks with either a V02 max (generally 5x3:30) or a Tempo run (3-4 miles) and 10 or 12 100m reps. The rest of the week is spent getting just getting the mileage in.

There is also Hal Higdon's plan for advanced runners which seems close to yours.

Stupid_Private

You're right, it does sound fairly intense. I don't go near hills but as far as I know they'll make you strong rather than fast. I'm currently training for the same type of distances for the next few months and my schedule looks something like this.

Long Run - Sunday - easy pace 15 miles.

Speed endurance - I've been doing this all winter, it's mainly been long intervals, 6 minute intervals, mile repeats, two miles repeats or a five mile hard session. I've done one session of that a week. This'll be replaced with a speed session over the next few weeks at the track.

Speed - one session - generally a fartlek session but will probably be replaced with a track session soon.

--amadeus--

I have the Lore of running so I'll dig that out, thanks. If it's a Pfitzinger plan then I'm in, I used an adapted plan of his from "Advanced Marathoning" in my prep for Rotterdam and it was outstanding.

I always worked by the maxim that "hills are speedwork in disguise"! SP, your plan looks similar to the one I followed for the marathon, looks good for a half but do you think you need 15 milers to prep for a 10k?

Stupid_Private

--amadeus-- wrote: »

looks good for a half but do you think you need 15 milers to prep for a 10k?

I'm getting into the habit of doing 15 milers year round now on a Sunday. They're scratched weekends of races though.

I was shocked recently to find that 1500m to 5000m athletes put in about 70-90 miles a week and do long runs of that distance as well. I don't know what sort of training I thought they'd do but I definately didn't think they put in more miles than I do when marathon training!

--amadeus--

Surprised at that! As you say you would imagine that at those distances much more work would be short and sharp.

The big advantage of bringing in some longer runs and intervals for me is that it would maintain fitness and speed for the marathon, think I might do that. Thanks!

thirtyfoot

Stupid_Private wrote: »

I was shocked recently to find that 1500m to 5000m athletes put in about 70-90 miles a week and do long runs of that distance as well. I don't know what sort of training I thought they'd do but I definately didn't think they put in more miles than I do when marathon training!

Craig Mottram does up to 120miles:eek: a week while Seb Coe never did more than 50. Peter Snell would nearly do half of Coe's mileage in one saturday session alone yet both were Olympic champions at 1500. Very much depends on the athlete and a coach's philosophy. El G apparently did vicous 15-20k runs at crazy paces while Lagat does only up to 20-30 miles a week in Oct/Nov.

cfitz

--amadeus-- wrote: »

Hi folks,

I've got a bit of a gap between now and starting my next full marathon training program so I thought I'd try and focus on the Clare 10k at the end of June.

Up till now I've only trained for marathons so I'm not sure what to do for the shorter distance. Plan at the moment is:

Endurance: I've just done a marathon so this should be the easy bit. Planning one "long" run per week of 6 - 10 miles at just under race pace

Speed Endurance: Slightly harder, maintaining pace over distance. I'm thinking 2 tempo runs per week, 4 - 6 miles as close to race pace as possible?

Speed: Hardest of all. Intervals for marathons have been 600m and up. I assume for a 10k I need to be looking at 400 - 600m reps, hills and fartlek, 2 sessions per week?

That leaves me training 5 days, with 2 rest. One worry is that it's all quite intense, no real hard / easy pattern. Any advice?

Thanks!

In my humble opinion:

With about 3 months til the race, I'd suggest you do different sets of training - something like:
Month 1, base mileage;
Month 2, tempos and hills;
Month 3, faster work.

It sounds to me like you're not doing enough mileage to start with. In the first month you should try get your weekly long run up to at least 70 minutes. And the rest of your runs up to at least 50 minutes. Maybe do one faster run, something like '15 min very easy, 20 min fairly hard, 15 min very easy'.

In the second month drop one of your easy runs and add in a hill session of maybe 6 x 200m steady/tough incline.

Then in the final month you can start doing things like 800s and 600s and pyramids instead of your hills and tempos.

All of the time I'd suggest building up (distance for runs, reps for sessions) over 3 week periods and then taking a week at 75% of the distance/reps.

I'm no expert though.

--amadeus--

cfitz wrote: »

It sounds to me like you're not doing enough mileage to start with. In the first month you should try get your weekly long run up to at least 70 minutes. And the rest of your runs up to at least 50 minutes.

I come from a bit of a marathon background (ran Rotterdam this weekend in 3:15 as my 7th full one). I have a few 10ks under my belt, the last one was a race time of 37:54 but was around 600m short and that was off the back of marathon training. My weekly mileage would traditionally be in the 40+ per week range so I'm not convinced that a month of base mileage would be of huge benefit?

The 3 week hard, 1 week fallback idea is a good one though and pyramid sessions and the like in the last few weeks instead of tempo runs is a great idea, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

cfitz

--amadeus-- wrote: »

I come from a bit of a marathon background (ran Rotterdam this weekend in 3:15 as my 7th full one). I have a few 10ks under my belt, the last one was a race time of 37:54 but was around 600m short and that was off the back of marathon training. My weekly mileage would traditionally be in the 40+ per week range so I'm not convinced that a month of base mileage would be of huge benefit?

The 3 week hard, 1 week fallback idea is a good one though and pyramid sessions and the like in the last few weeks instead of tempo runs is a great idea, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

Yeah maybe you're right considering about not needing a base if you already have a lot of base work done. And also if you're confined to 5 runs per week and still hitting 40+ miles you might be doing long enough runs.

I would suggest NOT dropping your mileage though if at all possible. My longest races are 10k and I'd generally run 50+ miles per week.