Time trials a part of training?

shels4ever

Hi all,

Do many people use this as a part of winter training, i'm looking to increase my miles over the next few months and putting in a session of speed work per week something like 4 X 1200m to start with at 5 k pace, and maybe build to doing 6 with 3 min recovery.

But also I'm looking at a 4000m time trial once ever 4 to 6 week. This will be jsut faster then my 5mile planned pace. Would this be too often?

thirtyfoot

shels4ever wrote: »

Hi all,

Do many people use this as a part of winter training, i'm looking to increase my miles over the next few months and putting in a session of speed work per week something like 4 X 1200m to start with at 5 k pace, and maybe build to doing 6 with 3 min recovery.

But also I'm looking at a 4000m time trial once ever 4 to 6 week. This will be jsut faster then my 5mile planned pace. Would this be too often?

While not a distance runner and an expert, I think its good to have some form of measurement and testing/evaluation in your training. I try to do time trials every 6 weeks in the winter and up until the racing season in spring. I do them and go through race preparation both mentally and physically for the time trials. It breaks up the winter where I won't race and also gives a gauge of how training is going.

cfitz

shels4ever wrote: »

Hi all,

Do many people use this as a part of winter training, i'm looking to increase my miles over the next few months and putting in a session of speed work per week something like 4 X 1200m to start with at 5 k pace, and maybe build to doing 6 with 3 min recovery.

But also I'm looking at a 4000m time trial once ever 4 to 6 week. This will be jsut faster then my 5mile planned pace. Would this be too often?

I'm usually happy enough just racing cross-country during the winter but running a time-trial every 4-6 weeks sounds reasonable enough.

shels4ever

Thanks for the info, I will go ahead with them starting in late sept will be a good gage I think. Have a nice course worked out and have run is years ago in a race..

Woddle

I do a time trial around a trusted 5 mile course, normally a week before a race to give me a bit of confidence Ill be doing one tonight in preperation for Saturday,1200 intervals can be quite tough to start with if you have not done much speed work before hand, I normally do 400s I really enjoy them, did a 5x800m couple weeks ago, very tough, could be just a mental thing with me though:D

curious george

last winter we did a 6 week cycle (hills,tempo runs etc..) with the 6th week a 4km time trial. I found the time trial excellent as positive re-inforcement that training was working but also as great race preparation. It also added nice FRIENDLY competition among the group and kept it interesting and fun for the winter

shels4ever

Thanks for the info .. almost have my next training plan done.. will post it here once its finished .

Speedboy

The problem with most training schedules is too much slow running and not enough fast running. Speed and speed endurance is foundation for fast times not high weekly milage. Athletes tend to forget the obvious to run fast you must run fast and you run fast by learning to run fast.

shels4ever

I'd agree with that i've a long way to go now, But will start my time trials end of sept, have 3 people to do them with but big diff in standards so after the first one, we are going to do them as a handicap with the fastest starting last, so should be a bit of fun too.... after todays show in the 10 mile i have so much more work to do..