5k race this morning. I ran the first mile in 6:40. I am 42. I know that is chump change to most of you, but to me, its fast. My Next 2 miles were 9, and then 8 minutes. I can’t hold the 6:40 all the way. I’ve been doing one mile repeats and 880s with other runners who end up running 20 minute or sub 20 5ks and 3:30 marathons. And the repeats are on 7:00! Yet I get in a 5k and just blow up after the first mile.
The irony is that I am much faster top end speed than my friends in 880s, or one mile repeats, I’m 15-20 seconds finished before any of them, same for mile repeats. I honestly think I can run a mile under 6 if I really tried hard.
I just can’t hold that pace and they pass my ass. Should I be even doing intervals? I talked to an ultrarunners who said to run longer, and longer and slower, that I didn’t have base. Or do tempo runs, hard at 40 minutes…
I want to run 10ks and will do one Half Ironman later in the summer and then a few marathons.
Two potential answers to your splits: (1) poor pacing and (2) poor endurance. Either can be fixed. What other runs do you do during the week besides intervals on the track? What sorts of times do you log on them? Do you wear an HRM and know what your max HR, LTHR etc is? What is your HR during your different training runs?
During the week, as far as running, probably do one 13 mile run on Saturday or Sunday, during the week, I do two 5-7 mile runs. One day of the week, usually Wednesday, we either do 4-5 one mile repeats on 7:00, we will walk half a lap at the high school track, do it again. Or on that Wednesday, we do a bunch of 880s, same thing, walk half a lap. Go off again. The 880s are on 3:15. I have no problem making 880s or the miles. They walk around to the start. I think I should be jogging around to it.
I don’t know.
I ran one marathon this winter in Little Rock, it was horrible, it was in 5:00 (dehyrdated…and I had ITBS big time). I’ve run a half marathon at 1:55 half marathon. I actually could have done the half easy in 1:50 or so, but I went out way too fast and ran the first 3 miles in 8:35 or so, each mile, but I felt good until mile 10. I actually walked ran from that point in.
Any long run beyond 10 miles for me is going to be at 10:15 pace or a little slower or I won’t make it. I can’t stay with them for our 10-14 mile long runs beyond mile 7-8 at a 9:00 pace, so just to make it, I have to start off a little back of them, at a 10:00 or so.
But I can run 18-20 mile non stop: slow. I don’t know how to regulate or spread out my pace. If I take the speed off the front end, I can’t spread it around the back end.
My Maximum heart rate is 187. On long slow runs, I’m right at 144. On the 5-7s, about 156. On intervals and this morning race, I’m at 180-183.
You need to run track workouts that are designed to improve your sustained pace at AT for at least 20 min – mile repeats are not the answer.
Try this:
8-16 x 400 w/100 – you can take an extra 400 EZ jog after #4, 8, 12, etc. if you want to, but the idea is to hold an even pace throughout the set.
If your goal pace for a 5K is 6:30, then hold each 400 at around 1:35-1:38. It will be super easy to do this at first – fight your natural tendency to “go out hard” – but by the last 4-6 you should be feeling fatigued enough that this should be challenging.
Keep a log of this set (I’d do it once/week for the next eight weeks) and challenge yourself to reduce the variance (i.e. hold a steady pace) while increasing the number of 400 repeats.
You’ll slaughter your 5K PR in about 60 days if you can do this with some consistency, I promise.
I think you have a pacing issue…I’m a strong proponent of negative splits in all distances, since it avoids mishaps like you had, and makes you feel strong in the second half of races
In a 5K, if you run the first mile in 6:40, that means you should run the second one in 6:30-6:35 and the last in <6:30…otherwise you started too fast. I recently ran a half-marathon, first mile in 6:20, last mile in 5:40…so maybe you should start a bit more conservatively (7:00 pace) and pick it up at the halfway mark.
To address it, I would try and run regularly an out and back course, and make sure you run faster on the way back than on the way out. If you do mile repeats, make sure your last repeat is at least as fast as the first one, if not faster.
In the few races I’ve done, I never get passed - I see way too many people that do the first mile (of a 10K, or half-marathon) at the pace they use in mile repeats, and then they realize a race is not composed of intervals with recovery inbetween, and they blow up…
I also think you have pacing issue. I think that 20 seconds slower on the first mile might increase your overall 5K time a couple minutes. No science here, just a illustrative thought.
Maybe you just had a bad race. You certainly run enough miles … If you want go faster in shorter races and work on gaining a bit of leg “speed:” Another, sort of radical idea is to run 200s. These should be done at a very speedy pace, with attention tor form … Maybe about as fast as you could run a half mile (6:00 pace or faster for you, so maybe 200s on 45 sec, or so) … Start with a good warm up and some drills, then do 8X200 with 200 jog … Work up to 12X200 over the course of the summer. Maybe try these 2 or 3X a month … And do the 800s and/or miles 2X3 times a month too. It’s a good mix if you can fit it in. -TB
8-16 x 400 w/100
On the recovery – do you jog the 100 or walk it? What is the target recovery time?
You should keep moving with a slow jog, taking roughly 30-40 seconds between each repeat. The more 400s that you can do without inserting the additional 400 recovery, the better your sense of pace will become for the 5-10K.
What follows is a very blunt assessment that I hope does not offend:
You raced exactly as you had trained. One mile at or below 7:00, at a HR of 180-ish, followed by a walk or a slow jog recovery. It’s what you trained your body to do on the track, and it’s what your body did in the race – only you kept running instead of walking for recovery, and that’s why the last two miles sucked so much.
The interval training is premature – as your friend said, you have base work to do yet. I’m sure the two-per-week interval sessions probably left you smoked at the end, which gives the impression of good, solid training. But your HR figures for the sessions (180-183bpm) show that you are going anaerobic, which is counterproductive to what you are really aiming to do, which is to build aerobic endurance.
You are not ready for track work yet (I really don’t think MOP athletes should be spending much time on the track, anyway). Nor are you ready for any kind of pace work against a clock. Put the stopwatch away, quit focusing on your mile splits, and pay attention to your heart rate monitor. The best advice you’ve received so far has been from the guy that suggested you still have some base work to do yet.
Some positive things to do:
Increase the run frequency to 5 per week, later on six. You’re already running 4 days a week, and that’s great. And you have a marathon under your belt – something’s working right.
Keep doing the LSD (long slow distance) at 144 bpm or so. Keep the 5-7 miler at 156. It’s all aerobic, it’s all good.
Instead of track workouts, go back to good-old-fashioned fartlek running to get your pace work in: on a normal 5-7 mile run, icrease your pace for about 6 minutes or so, letting your HR get to 165 or so, but not over 170. After 6 minutes of this, slow down to a normal pace for 10 minutes or so – “normal” can be as slow as you want. Repeat maybe three times per run, adding more as you improve over the weeks. Do this once a week at first, twice if you’re feeling good. Just stay aerobic.
Every two weeks or so, pick out a 5k course and let it all hang out. You will learn how to pace yourself through trial and error (there really is no other way).
You seem like a goal-oriented individual from your other posts. Find another race to point towards, make a simple plan --YOUR plan, not someone else’s – and stick to it. Be patient – the times WILL come down and you WILL get faster.
When all else fails, or better yet BEFORE all else fails, read Lydiard. He knew what he was doing.
Although I agree with your assesment, why no track work? Isn’t Farlek simply “unstructered” track work.
The one thing that jumps out to me is that Boothrand is doing mile repeats at 7:00 @ 95%+ MaxHr, then pulls off a 6:40 first mile in a race. Sounds to me like the first mile was WAY to fast and likely the mile repeats are being run way to hard as well.
Personally I’d say stick with the track work but do the workouts at a more appropriate pace. There’s a reason Boothrand’s workout buddies are running slower mile repeats, then kicking his tail in a 5K race.
Then as you suggest find some 5K races and work on pacing. I read somewhere that for every 1 second per mile you go out to fast you can add 5 seconds to every following mile or something very generic like that.
Going out to hard is a killer. Much better to go out easy and push the last mile. Try doing a 5K were you really hold back on the first mile, run the middle one comfortably, and balls to the wall on the last one. Whats’ likely to happen is that the last won’t be all that much faster than the first one because on the first one you’re fresh, filled with adrenaline and caught up with everyone else. Besides there’s alot to be said about the physcological effects of passing people at the end of a race rather than being passed.
The great thing about fartlek is that it allows you to focus on aerobic pacing, rather than on getting around the track in a certain time. That’s important in the early stages of training. Too often when we get out on the track too soon and strain ourselves because we’re focused on pacing for a certain split – “beating the clock” – the result is discouragement, or worse, injury: premature interval training is a good way to pull a hamstring or strain a quad. I’d save the track work for now, and learn pacing without using a stopwatch.
Fartlek for now – track work in the last 4-6 weeks before a race, after completing a good period of base building and hill work. OOPS – did I mention hill work? There’s good old Lydiard again…
I think this is a “personality trait” thing. I always ended up doing out and out sprints whilst doing any type of fartlek. My mentality was “Hey I can push harder than that” OTOH I often ended up going at the proper pace on the track because I knew exactly how fast I should be going and could “Hold back” on teh next effort. Either way it took me a couple years to have a good enough grasp on my efforts before I could truely run by effort only and hit the right zones.
I can see your point especially if your doing track work without a proper goal and the goal is to simply “go as fast as you can”.
In the end I think it depends on what works best for you, not that one is inherantly better or worse.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the comment about planning your workouts – on the track or not – with an objective in mind. If you show up to train without knowing what your objective is, or if you wrote your June workout plan in January and haven’t reviewed it since – you’re wasting time.
BTW, I do like track work and made some great improvements one year by doing really simple sets of 400m repeats: 400m at slightly above “race pace”, 400 easy, 400m at pace, etc., for an hour at a time, over a 6-week period. That, plus running the stadium steps (another way to get hill training in), yielded some good results. Of course, I was 14 years younger then, and I could go out and “turn over a quick 400” without fear the undercarriage tearing away. Now I find I really have to make sure my legs are ready for the track before I step onto the oval. So much younger then…sigh.