tips for a fast 10k?

valentine4

Hi all,

Just finished marathon training with a lovely 20 min pb at derry marathon came in at 4.12 was happy with it - it was extremely warm and muggy which being irish of course I'm not used to, we all suffered.

I have my eye now on changing my training round completely and going for a fast 10k. The race I am aiming for is in 6 wks time, alot of people go for pb's on it, it is downhill and fast my time to beat is from last yr on it when I came in 49mins and that was me tying my laces 3 times!!

so any tips on what to do? I am going back to speed work with my club tomorrow night, starting insanity on wed night ( eek what am I letting myself in for!) and want to continue with my weekly hill run.

Am also going to ditch the watch i.e. going by times and start using the heart rate monitor.

Any tips or advice on getting my time down? am also going to face my fear and do a 5k race too.

TavistockToad

If you've just trained for a marathon then I'd hazard you'll get a new pb without too much trouble

valentine4

wouldn't you think? no I did a 10k a week before the marathon and it was a diaster. Well not a disaster but nowhere near a pb.

Completely different training - lots of medium long runs, long long slow runs, hill work, some intervals, but def not an increase in speed. I wish

codename_steve

This year I'm also working on getting faster. For my half marathon, I had some luck with adding strength training and speed work (neither were part of my training the first go around). I was able to increase from 2:55 to 2:06 on similar courses.

TavistockToad

valentine4 wrote: »

wouldn't you think? no I did a 10k a week before the marathon and it was a diaster. Well not a disaster but nowhere near a pb.

Completely different training - lots of medium long runs, long long slow runs, hill work, some intervals, but def not an increase in speed. I wish

I found training for a half made my shorter runs quicker, so just presumed...

lporter229

valentine4 wrote: »

wouldn't you think? no I did a 10k a week before the marathon and it was a diaster. Well not a disaster but nowhere near a pb.

Completely different training - lots of medium long runs, long long slow runs, hill work, some intervals, but def not an increase in speed. I wish

I agree with @TavistockToad. Generally lots of long, slow runs will make you naturally faster. However, you mentioned that you did your 10K a week before your marathon. Perhaps you were just very fatigued from the marathon training. For your 10K, I would not change a whole lot from your marathon training other than to shorten your long runs and add at least two days of some type of speed work such as intervals, hill repeats or tempo runs. Really focus on getting the most out of those speed sessions. Push yourself as much as you can. You definitely need to get outside of your "comfortable" zone. Then use the following day to recovery with either a rest day or a very nice, slow recovery run.

The_Enginerd

TavistockToad wrote: »

valentine4 wrote: »

wouldn't you think? no I did a 10k a week before the marathon and it was a diaster. Well not a disaster but nowhere near a pb.

Completely different training - lots of medium long runs, long long slow runs, hill work, some intervals, but def not an increase in speed. I wish

I found training for a half made my shorter runs quicker, so just presumed...

This has been my experience as well. I cut quite a bit of time off of my 5k time training for a half marathon. And another big chunk by training for a marathon. I did no 5k targeted speed work at all when training for the marathon. All easy miles except for one run a week at MP.

STrooper

I've only done two 10K's in recent years and the times were so dramatically different because of where I was in my training and fitness. But this year I did quite well in a 10K race just a week before a 5K and a marathon on the following weekend. I set PRs in the 10K and the 5K (52:56 in the 10K which would have been faster if it wasn't for the crowding and 24:11 in the 5K which I ran at about 80% because I was running the marathon the next day). I wasn't trying to PR the marathon (still came mighty close without trying).

It seems like the 8-10 mile runs helped the most with the 10K distance. If you're training with a HRM, then an 8-miler with 4 miles (in the middle) pushing you to 5K pace (the so called lactic acid threshold run) seemed to match the needs of the 10K the best. Next best was VO2 max intervals of 8 miles with 6-8 repeats at max output over distances of 400-800m. Each of those intense runs were done one day per week with other days ranging from 5-10 miles of much easier paced runs.

I don't know what process you are going to use to set your heart rate zones. Fitzgerald has some recommendations and I use the Digifit program to set my zones. There is a fair amount of good guidance out there on how to set your HRM training zones. Setting your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR) seems to be one key indicator since above that you will be running in anaerobic conditions

Since nearly all my training has involved running using HR as the metric, I've noticed the following: my HR zones don't change very much over time (nor does my LTHR). What has changed is the speed that I can run for any given heart rate zone. My aerobic pace (zone 3) used to be in the mid-high-10's/mile. This morning it was in the low 8's/mile on the flats, mid-8's on the uphill climbs.

Vladimirnapkin

It should be noted that the 5k and 10k, if run at peak, are very different animals. You can bang out a 5k on VO2max, but to hold pace for twice as long requires quite a bit more volume and threshold/tempo pace workouts.

Training for the 10k and the marathon should be pretty similar, but with some longer tempo and marathon paced runs. I can tell you right now, because you just ran a 20 minute PB, that you are nowhere near your ability in the marathon and should continue to see improvement.

Some regular speedwork, over a few months time, should yield significant improvement in your 10k, which will spill over into your marathon.

Work toward a minimum of 6000 meters of quality running in each interval session, starting with 2000 and adding volume as you get stronger. An example would be ladder workouts in blocks of 400, 600, 800, 200. Recover with 200 meter jogging between each interval, and 400 between each block. These should be at 5k pace. If you can't hold the pace, you're going too fast.

Training for speed is all about stress and recovery. The recovery (easy days) are just as important as the workouts.