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.

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.

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.