Running drills?

I have my first 10K in October. I just finished week 7 of an app called C25K, and I plan to start the coach to 10K after I complete all the training required for the 5K. Can you please elaborate on the running drills? I assume that things get easier with time and practice. The good thing is that you should have plenty of time to train for the 10K.

Interesting, looks a little difficult. I assume that with practice things will get easier. How many times a week are you currently running? Are you doing the drills in your off days?

I have been racing for about 2 years now and running for many years for fitness. I have just completed my 4th half marathon and am just now really working on speed. The drills you describe help to improve quadricep and hip flexor flexibility. They also help with increasing cadence (number of steps per minute).
High Knees or marching helps with reinforces midfoot landing, increasing cadence, and hamstring flexibility and strength. Skipping will help with coordination, foot strike, and increasing cadence. These are helpful but can be challenging at first.

Personally, I would just focus on increasing your mileage by no more than 10% per week to help build endurance. The drills are great and if you feel like it try them for 10 minutes and increase slowly. I am not a running coach, I am just giving my 2 cents about the things I have found to be helpful in my running career, LOL.

The drills are helpful, but challenging. I would just focus on endurance and getting your legs get used to increased mileage. Feel free to email me if you need some articles. Good luck!

Drills exaggerate various aspects of running form, to help you run with better form. Some of them work on strengthening parts of your running chain. Doing drills before a speed workout is traditional in my running club. Run a 2 mile warm up, do a lap of drills, do whatever the quality workout is. 25 minutes of drills sounds excessive.

To put some perspective on where I'm coming from: I belong to a club that has a goal of fielding teams of runners in all age groups and both genders for USATF national events. For the USATF Masters 10K Championship in Dedham, MA last Sunday, we sent teams in 7 categories and captured 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and 2 thirds. The training can get pretty serious. However, the typical amount of drills is one lap of an outdoor track, about 400 meters. We don't move very fast when doing drills, but I would be shocked if we spent as long as 5 minutes on drills before going into the quality workout.

Perhaps you're in a differently designed system and there's a reason why it wants you to do 25 minutes of drills. I don't think I could tolerate that much mentally. A little bit of drills goes a long way, and any amount of drills is too much when I'm rehabbing an injury.

To address your questions: Yes, drills are useful. Yes, they get easier with practice. But you don't need a whole lot of them, and you don't need them every time you run. I may run 5 or 6 days a week and do drills 2 of those days before quality workouts; but even 10 minutes of drills sounds like an awful lot to me. And if Coach neglects to asks someone to lead drills, I don't point out the omission.

I am a member of a running club and the only time we do drills is before our track / intervals sessions. And they are only for about 10-15 minutes slotted in between the actual session and a couple of warm up laps.