When and where to add to routine

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

Three runs, totalling 15 miles per week is a bit light.

Personally I'd recommend adding a run day, but if you're sticking with three then one easy, one long and one speed will potentially help.

I'd suggest using your Tuesday as your speed day, although that may impact your leg session. I'd avoid the Thursday for speed as you're in limited recovery before your Saturday easy paced.

For a speed session id go for a 10-15 minutes warm up at your easy pace, followed by either 3-4 miles of tempo pace or an interval set, then 10-15 minute cool down. Intervals when you're new to speed would be say 8 of 200 metres​ with minute rest periods at your easy pace.

What I'd do for a 10 K at the moment is:

Monday - rest
Tuesday - speed session up to 12K
Wednesday - easy recovery to 10K
Thursday - X training
Friday - X training
Saturday - Easy paced up to 12K
Sunday - Long up to 18K

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

Okohme wrote: »

The hill work I was looking at was saying to sprint uphill for 100m, then walk back down the hill, then sprint back up, and do that 12-24 times.

I will do some more reading regarding the speed sessions you suggested.

I have a couple of speed goals I would like to hit before moving on to some more of my distance goals, but I am also limited in the time I have for training (I'm working on that.) and my current hope is that if I able to go faster I can run more moles in the time I have available and can also increase my miles.

So there are a few issues coming out of this. If you take a look at Matt Fitzgerald, he talks a lot about doing about 80% of your running at your easy pace, with only 20% speedwork. Your recent 10K was a decent effort at a 10 min/ mile, and that's a bit slower than my easy pace, a 9:30 min/ mile. So whilst your easy pace will improve a little with speedwork, it's not going to give you significantly more distance in the time available.

For speedwork, don't skimp the warm up. And for what you're talking about I'd veer towards cruise intervals or tempo rather than sprint intervals. Sprint intervals help your oxygen uptake to improve, but what you're talking about is sustained speed. So that would be a speed portion of running at, or faster than, your race pace. So after a warm up say three speed intervals of one km each with a 400m at easy pace between them. These sessions help improve your lactate threshold, essentially the pace that you can sustain for about an hour.

I still think your mileage is low for this. I wouldn't do a speed session of less than 6 miles, as it needs over a mile to warm up and cool down. For a 10K improvement plan I'd be designing for 20 miles per week as entry increasing to 30mpw in peak load, for a Half plan I'd be aiming at 25-30mpw as entry.

As far as weight training is concerned, I'd take the advice from Rybo. A full body session is both time efficient and more likely to give you the core stability benefits that will help your running. The main thing is to identify what's important to you and structure your planning around that.

rybo wrote: »

Okohme wrote: »

rybo wrote: »

Okohme wrote: »

The hill work I was looking at was saying to sprint uphill for 100m, then walk back down the hill, then sprint back up, and do that 12-24 times.

I will do some more reading regarding the speed sessions you suggested.

I have a couple of speed goals I would like to hit before moving on to some more of my distance goals, but I am also limited in the time I have for training (I'm working on that.) and my current hope is that if I able to go faster I can run more moles in the time I have available and can also increase my miles.

I don't think you are going to get the results you want from speedwork with mileage that's already fairly low. More mileage helps with speed as much as actual speed work does. Also, you don't need to bury yourself on the speed days. With speed, more is not always better

I would change a lot
Monday: Full body strength
Tuesday: Speed
Wednesday: Easy 4
Thursday: Full body Strength
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Run 4mi
Sunday: Run 7 mi

Full body strength is what? All of the things that I do over the course of a week?
I guess I was looking to speedwork for some results as to this point my increased miles have not seemed to increase my speed, but then I don't have a very good test for that.

Sort of but not really. You'll cover all muscle groups, but use less exercises. OHP, Squats, Deadlift (or some hinge movement), bench or pushups, rows/pullups and lunges.

gearhead426hemi wrote: »

I would recommend trying to change up your weight training. Superset everything with minimal rest to improve your endurance and recovery. Have you ever tried Tabata training? I do Tabata training 4 days a week and run twice a week. Really shock your muscles and never do the same workout twice in a week. Set a specific goal you want to achieve and record everything. My goal is 5 mile run with sub 8 minute mile pace. I'm going to be 39 this year not old but not spring chicken either. In 90 days I shed 20 pounds and have dropped almost a minute off per mile.

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

Okohme wrote: »

Why over a mile for warm-up and cool down?

If you're doing sprint intervals, or tempo work, you need to give your system time to build up to that. Your muscles and connective tissues need to warm up and stretch, so that the explosive forces of acceleration and deceleration don't cause damage.

When you do your training runs, do you map stuff out in advance or use an app to tell you when you've gone X distance and its time to switch back to easy or faster pace?

I've got them loaded into my Garmin based on what I'm wanting to do. That alerts me based on time, distances or HR. You could use Endomondo or Runkeeper to do similar.

I also have some known routes that I'll use for a 10K session, 16K (10mi) session, 21.1K, 25K, 32K. They're generally all for easy pace sessions, rather than speedwork, although I wil use the 21.1K as a time trial depending on where I am in my training.