Sunday, April 03, 2011

Faster faster the lights are turning red!

Life in the fast lane!



As you may know with my marathon being cancelled I've turned my attention to a 10K PB and have been following a 33 min 10K plan. The trouble with this is most of the sessions call for times that are close to or better than my PBs at 3K to 5K, like 3 x 3200 meter repeats in 10:39 with 400 meter jog repeats in between! Given that my 3K PB is 10:15 you can see that I'm having trouble finishing these kind of sessions off!

Actually I'm really not worried, I figure if I can get thereabouts I will see improvement. But one thing that does worry me is the plans' "easy" days have me running at 4:15 per K over about 10ks. While I can handle these sessions (have been cruising up until now), I worry that they don't give me much rest between speed sessions and I'm going to breakdown sooner or later.

What do you think? Should I battle on with it? If not, how would you adapt this schedule if you were me?

8 comments:

  1. mmm well Scotty, think you might be on the road to the slow lane!
    One thing I have learned in the last year is the importance of recovery.
    You may see improvement in the short term but risk long term burnout!
    Marius did advise a really fast runner on using the 100 day plan to run well over 5-10K, if I find it I'll send it on to you.
    Or you could ask By7 for some coaching advice!
    I went through 6 miles dead on 35 mins in the half marathon last week, taking into account the 1/2 mile hill at the start and the fact I still had 7 miles to go I reckon I'm in low 35 min 10K shape, which is close to my very best.
    So I think If you follow the 5-10k section in the plan and maybe run one of the sessions at 5K pace plus do one of the Special Strides uphill each week your run your best possible 10k without burning out!

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  2. http://www.marathon-training-schedule.com/10k-training.html

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  3. would love to advise you on that Scott, but that is so far beyond my pace that I could only teach you how to suck eggs

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  4. What masochist wrote your schedule. You're right about the lack of recovery - it only leads to heartbreak/ breakdown / breaks in bones. Unfortunately I don't know how to fix the schedule for you.

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  5. Scott does the schedule advise on what 10k shape you should be in before starting. Maybe the gap you are trying to bridge it too big for one season/training period.

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  6. The 4:15 pace for 'non-workout' (easy) runs sounds reasonable.

    Is there any 'sprinting' in the schedule, both on the flat and short hills? Flat out running?

    You might need to hit that end of the spectrum a tad. Something like 20 x 100m in 16ish. I recall doing that when I was trying to break 10 for 3k. It made 72 sec 400 repeats feel much easier.

    Work on whatever your weakness are but hold onto your strengths.

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  7. I for one am very curious how this will pan out. I know a few folks who swear that concentrating on 10k pace has improved their marathon times by a massive factor, others claim the opposite.

    Good luck to you!

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  8. The only way to race faster is to train faster Scott.You will adapt to the training although you will become so tired you will have to skip some days but after a while youll be training like you race and racing faster take recovery but your body should learn to recover a bit quicker to and if you crash and burn rest and go again.When starting off treat your training a bit like a race watch your diet and be good to yourself. Thats my inexperienced opinion.

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