10k in less than 40 minutes

Sagitt

OK Guys,

So here are the targets - 10k under 40 mins, 5k under 19 mins.
Just right now I can do 5k in 19:50, 10k just under 42 minutes. I am looking to achieve my targets sometime this autumn on one of BHAA races. I do three sessions per week (on average) this way:

Speed session - 10-15 min warming up then intervals 10x1 min fast + 1 min recovery, and 10-15 min easy run at the end. I will try to build intervals up to 16x1 fast + 1 slow and then I would like to change interval times. And here is a question as there are three possible scenarios:

• should I increase time for fast run (and how much from 1 min - 1:15? 1:30?)
• should I leave 1 minute fast and decrease recovery?
• or should I increase both fast run time and recovery as well?

10k run - 10 min warming up, 20 minutes at the good pace (below targeted pace), 10 min cooling on easy run.

Long Run - at least 90 minutes of easy running.

Does it make any sense? I am novice runner, have started running last October, progressed from 50min on 10K in November to 42 min for 10k in June. Is this visible to get myself to the targets outlined above? Any better ideas of how to organise three sessions per week?

regards,
Sagitt

ger664

Check out the first post in this thread

RayCun

Do you mean three sessions a week or three runs? If you do more runs at your easy pace - not necessarily 10k, anything over 30 minutes is fine - that will help build your aerobic capacity.

Your speed sessions are basically 10x300s, I'm guessing. That's a fine session, but you shouldn't do it every week. If alternate between 10x300s and the McMillan sessions ger pointed you to you'll improve more.

chinguetti

I don't do speed sessions as they injure me but you need to get the 5k time down first under 19 mins, preferably 18 m 40 range before you worry about the sub 40 10k.

It will be hard to knock the few seconds off so don't despair, it will come. It took me 18 months to go from 19.01 to sub 19 but when it happened, i knocked over 30 seconds off. Try and do a 5k every 6 weeks or so to gauge your level and you'll see an improvement in time but don't rush it.

1 speed session, 2 recovery runs and a lsr of 10 miles a week would be what i would say. Good luck.

RayCun

chinguetti wrote: »

I don't do speed sessions as they injure me but you need to get the 5k time down first under 19 mins, preferably 18 m 40 range before you worry about the sub 40 10k.

I was down to 39:1x before I scraped under 19 minutes

chinguetti

RayCun wrote: »

I was down to 39:1x before I scraped under 19 minutes

Ah stop bragging Ray:D

Well OP, it just goes to shows that everyone is different. However, i focused on the 5k time before i turned to the 10k time.