Mission : Break 1:40 for HM

Just throwing out my 2c on the lack of endurance and probably best to start off with the most simplistic things.

You are running fairly low volume(~30mpw). This is probably self explanatory when it comes to lack of endurance

Two intense runs a week all year round. I haven't seen much of your training beyond this log so this is an assumption based on what you said in posts on here and what I can remember from posts you have made on the main forum over the years. I bet my life savings that you have an up and down progression history even in short races. That you get into shape to run PB's or close to it and then fall off a lot again after for no reason? Workouts are for peaking, they get you to a high level of fitness but if you keep doing them beyond that peak, you start to lose fitness rapidly as your body starts to rebel against them.

Your long run is ~37% of your weekly mileage(for someone training for a 5k, that is very high percentage of total mileage). I see you put a lot of emphasis on the long run as the ultimate endurance maker and breaker. This is purely my opinion so take it few, I think the long run is severely overrated. That's not to say I don't think it's important, I do think it is but that people may apply too much weight to how important it is. It needs to be in balance with your weekly mileage and that the focus should be more on a good even spread of aerobic running across the whole week. Look at the success Singer had in 2017 DCM and Wottle in 2018 in their logs when they decided to run a marathon on a whim without doing marathon long runs and just had a good spread of volume in training. That is what a good endurance base is(they probably would of run faster if they did do proper marathon training and long runs but not by as much as you would think, they would probably testify to that themselves). It shows just how important all 7 days of the week are to building good endurance and not just a weekend long run.


On the subject of lost speed mentioned on the first page. I think it's a fairly common misconception that people get confused by a lack of speed and a lack of endurance(get them mixed up). You often hear people say they need more speedwork when they fall off the pace in the second half of a race but that is actually backwards. If you are falling off pace in the second half of a race or a workout, it means you have the speed but lack the endurance. I'll give you 2 examples from my past to better illustrate this:

In 2015, I focused on the track for all of Spring(1500m and 3000m Steeplechase). Most of what I was doing was 200's, 400's and 800's at 3k or faster pace. Track season finished up and I had improved my speed massively but I couldn't get close to my PB's at 5k or above. I could go out at a pace much faster than PB pace and feel like I was jogging for a mile or two and all of a sudden, it would feel like an elephant stood on my shoulders in the blink of an eye. That's what a lack of endurance feels like.

The other side of the coin. In 2017, I was building up for a marathon so a lot of the first 2 or 3 months was just very low intensity base training and one very short tempo run of 15-20min every week. When I raced in those first two months, I couldn't go out fast in races as my legs felt flat and horrible from mile 1 but I could hold that pace all day and never felt like an elephant was on my back. This is what a lack of speed feels like.

3 months after the 2015 example, I ran the best XC season of my life because I built endurance on top of that track speed.

3 months after the 2017 example, I ran HM and 5k PB's because coach added a bit more intensity on the solid base of endurance I had built from base training.

Accurately identifying what you need and when you is a huge part of running well I think.


When I see someone like you who is lacking endurance, I wouldn't personally think of sessions like 1 mile reps as the solution. Not that there is anything wrong with doing speed sessions, I just wouldn't look at them as endurance builders perse, they would be speed builders and you would be lacking endurance so it doesn't fit right imo to be doing a short interval session and long tempo/intervals every week. Maybe something you could consider would be an MP or slightly faster workout or a moderate 40-60 minute run(30-45sec per mile slower than MP every second week instead of a session and mix it up to give your endurance a boost.

Just some ideas, make of them what you want, apologies for the thesis but I got carried away.