Seeking help from runners - 5km training

Triathlon Forum
1

I do sprint tris and the reason I’m not consistantly on the AG podium is because of my running. I’m mostly a bike guy and of the three tri activities, running is by far my weakest. I’ve decided that this year I am going to try to improve my running, so as well as the normal bunch of sprint tris this summer I’m also intending to run a boatload of 5 kms races and a couple of 10 kms.

I’m 52 and was a 100m and 4 X100m relay sprinter in high school. Never ran anything longer competitively than a 200m and didn’t run at all for eons until I got into tri. Typically I plod along at about 23:30 in a 5 kms. Fairly consistant at this, never get any faster but on some days can be slower. I don’t run that much and don’t have a particular plan, instead I’ve just tended to “go out for a run”. Most tri training has been on the bike and I’ve been much more scientific with my bike and swim training than with running. My goal is to be able to get this 5 km down under 20 minutes by the end of this season and then start to consider longer distances. I’m convinced that I can do it, but realize it will take some effort.

I’ve dug my heart monitor up from it’s place in the drawer and am now ready to run. Does anyone have any good suggestions for 5 km programs. Any websites. Any help is most appreciated.

3

The workout idea that Francois mentioned is great. I did those (“30-30’s”) for a 4-week cycle in Nov/Dec last fall. Good stuff.

Your thought to run a “boatload” of 5’s and 10’s is a fantastic idea.

There are lots of “right ways” to get there. A really, really good way is to crank out 6-8 weeks of 5-6 runs a week of slowly increasing volume. Do one or two “easy” and the rest “harder than easy.” It’s been said to death, but base is exremely important. I, too, was bike-focused. As such, I never really understood what all this base building was about because it’s hard to really hurt yourself cycling. But running too hard too quick will hurt you, and badly. So, get resilient. Get in a “tireless state” (as Lydiard called it) where daily 60-90 minute runs are easily linked together.

After that base, you can take your pick of various protocols to get some high-level aerobic stress going. But, you’ve got to go out and do some quick running. You’ve got to breathe really, really hard for at least 20 minutes once a week. An easy or off day the day before and after these sessions.

I was at 23:00 in the 5k a year ago (after a year and a half of tri training; age 43), and I’m barking at the door of 20:00 right now. I think I’ll be able to knock it down this summer.

4

Hey cerveloguy–i’m a runner turned duathlete. that’s why i’ve been recently asking biking q’s (thanks for your input on slamming, btw).

I am no authority, but i ran DI XC and track in college–31:30 10K and 54:30 10 miles. I’m a married med student, so i have limited workout time–i currently can run 5k in about 18mins on this schedule. This plan is a very lose one, which allows me to change as needed.

Anyway, My input is to do things in either 10 day or 14 day cycles, depending on what real-life restrictions you’ve got (darn work! always getting in the way of things!). I’d say 10 days is ideal though, based a lot of the running literature. Many athletes can’t adhere to this, as races are typically every 7 days, but especially in the Jan-May period before the real racing begins, it’s a nice plan to follow. 10 days allows more rest between hard days, and offsets them nicely, so (for example) Monday isn’t always the “hard day”.

My 10 day training period really only includes 3 specific workouts (like the previous poster said–base train before doing specific workouts!). Long day, strength day, and speed day. 1) Long day–you said you can (or are planning) to run 10k’s, so 6 or 8ish miles is not unreasonable–definitely at least an hour though when you’re ready for it. 2) Strength day–hills are your friend–find a hill that’s over 1 minute run to climb. Pick a number–run up and down it that many times. Not sure how hilly it is around you, but we used to do 5-10 times up a 2 minute hill, or as many as 20 times up a 1 minute hill. In the end this is about 20 minutes of actual intervals. You may start out walking recoveries, but as race time approaches, jogged recoveries are just as valuable as the hills. And finally, 3) Speed day–do what you hate the least–like the track?–start out with something like 200’s. Work up to 10-20 of them at somewhere around 6 minute mile pace. Again–eventually you should be jogging recoveries, or doing 200’s “ON” a time, like swimmers to cut rest. Hate the track?–run telephone pole intervals, or fartlek workouts (ie, half hour run where you run fast for 2 poles and slow or walk for 4 poles). No poles?–Set your watch to beep every 30 seconds and run fast for 30 and slow/walk for 1-2 minutes.

The other 7 days–depends on what real life throws at you–i run only about 2-3 of them (and ride 3 days/week). As a TRI athlete, not a DUathlete, you have more events to train for, and i could see doing as few as one other run during the week. depends how much time you’ve got.

I hope this helps at all. Mainly i would say don’t make it OVER structured–hills and fartleks are great. If you only have time for 2 of the 3 workouts–i’d say start with the long day and the hill day Jan-April and move to the hill day and fast day April onward. 5k or 10k races can substitute for your hard day or fast day (depending on how fast you ran :slight_smile: ).

5

I also ran the same pace for years.

A friend of mine suggested the following to me and it seemed to work well for me.

4x800,4x400,4x200. We would jog/walk one lap between each repeat. We did them as fast as possible without slowing down in consecutive repeats, in other words, don’t blow your wad on the first 800. He and I did this once a week all summer. My 5k time went from 22 to 19 min. I usually run to the track and back about 10 min each way and run a few laps to warm up. Warm-up is crucial, especially since we’re not in high school anymore. The 4th 800 is the hardest.

6

I’ve been a decent runner and am starting to get bak into shape now…could run a tough 6km cross country in 18mins not too far off that pace now.

I have to agree with rossman it’s not just about distance I’m currently doing between 3 & 4 run secessions a week with only 1 or 2 long runs (10-15kms) anymore and my shins-splints blow up.

Anyway enough about me, bottom line to go fast for any distance over say 3kms you need to be able to run fast in a relaxed efficient way without putting to much impact or stress on your body, the best way to practice this is to do some shorter distance work either track or interval anything from 100m to 1 & 2km surges just concentrating on getting your speed up whilst staying relaxed and efficient.

Hills are a great way to build extra strenght and power with your running, hill running is something that also needs to be practiced keeping an efficient style is important you see some people get very ugly on hills this can be a huge waste to energy

In addition there is always room for a few other secessions drills sprints and some weights.

Not much but hope it helps

7

Getting the mileage up at 52 with no running background is going to be a real bitch. You need to try different ways to get the mileage up around 30 to 40 miles a week without getting injured. Do this anyway you can, on a treadmill if the roads are too tough. Expect injuries and setbacks.

Once you get up to this level, you can start mixing in some speed work. Any of the approaches described above will work once you can do some mileage without injury.

I come from a running background many moons ago. I am now 48. I have been at this for nearly five years. I am finally getting there. After years of trying, I just set a PR of 21:38 for the 5K. Only 10 seconds a mile slower than my old marathon pace. Man, does that suck or what?

I wouldn’t worry about the speedwork until you can get the mileage up. Lay in the base. If you can’t do that, speedwork will just get you hurt. The races you suggest doing will be more than enough speedwork for you at first.

Stay at it. You are old, but not dead yet.

8

Hey C-guy-

Some things that have helped me: long distances, hills, speedwork on the track. I would suggest upping how many days you run per week, and the mileage as well. As others have said, you need to build slowly. When you do get around to speed, I would suggest doing the hill repeats (if you choose to do that) first, as they are less taxing. Add in a track workout later on to your weekly run sessions. But overall, if you want to get faster with running, you need to make that the focus of your training. From what you’ve said, you are a good cyclist. You know that’s because of all the time you spend doing it. Running is the same way. Also, another thing that has really helped me gain strength in running is doing bricks. You may want to add a run immediately after a bike ride maybe once every other week.

If running is your weak link, make it a priority to work on it.

Good luck. You’ll get there with patience, work, and time.

9

IMH(and absolutely unqualified)O:
my high school track coach used to say: “if you want to run fast, you have to run fast”.
my college track/xc coach used to say: “you have to learn to run fast when you’re tired”
for triathlon, you want to run fast when you’re tired from swimming and biking. so for tri’s i go by the philosophy: “if you want to run fast when you’re tired, you have to run fast when you’re tired”.
meaning run fast immediately after you bike. in training. since you’re already warmed up, it’s better quality and since you’re already tired it’s race specific.

i think your swimming and cycling hours should be good enough base. so just use the time you spend running going fast. especially in training for sprint tri’s.

10

I almost forgot. Lose the weight. Lose the weight. And most importantly, lose the weight. It will help you train and it will make a big speed difference.

I think the weight loss is nearly all the reason for my recent improvement. I am 5’ 8", 150, down 10 pounds from six months ago. It makes a huge difference. I may have another 10 pounds to go, though I doubt I will make it that far.

I know it is a miserable process, but lose the weight.

11

The best thing you can do to improve running performance in the 5k to 10mile or so distances is longer repeats (3-6min) at 5k to 10k pace. rest intervals should be less than the time of the fast part, 2-4 min, and total volume should be equal to or slightly more than your 5k time or 5k in distance, 5x1000 or 7x3min for someone like you cerveloguy. People mess this up by running too fast. You are not a 20:00 man right now. Running 6x800 at 3:15 will break you. Running 6x800 at 3:45-3:50 will make you better. Maybe run the last one or two a little, 5sec or so, quicker, but no more. If you feel fresh you are probably better off doing another repeat rather than running faster. You should leave the track thinking “maybe I could do one more”. Done once a week with your other training this will steadily bring your current pace down towards what you want. Workouts can easily be on the roads or trails using effort and time rather than distance, just don’t go too hard. If you feel yourself plateauing or just getting tired of this type of training go into a cycle of tempo or hill running for a couple weeks. When you come back to running the intervals you’ll probably find you haven’t lost much speed and are ready to start building towards your goal again. Longer intervals will build the mental ability to focus on holding a hard pace better than running the same pace for shorter intervals.

Workout meets the specificity principle as it is at your race pace and it gives your vO2 max a good shot. Powerful stuff, but needs to be used judiciously.

Keith

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The one thing that hasn’t been mentioned in this thread yet is form & technique. Running efficiently is the key to running faster. If you’re not using your body correctly, you’ll plateau at a much slower pace than your potential and you’ll stand a much higher chance of injury along the way.

We do shoe fittings with a video analysis system. 90% of the people I analyze land with their heel first, and have a cadence of less than 85 spm. A few of them are pretty fast, but none better than 6:00 pace in a 5k. The fast ones run differently.

The reason most people land with their heel is that they are reaching out with their leg to lengthen their stride, thinking this will make them faster. When you do this, your heel hits the ground in front of your knee. If your foot hits in front of you, it pushes backward against you, slowing you down. You only speed up when your foot is behind your center of gravity.

To run more efficiently, think about planting the ball of your foot on the ground first. It’ll feel weird, and your calves will hurt because you’re really asking them to work for the first time in your running. For some people it works better to think about lifting your heels straight up & pointing your toe down. For others, it helps to think about actively pushing off your back foot. Whatever focus area works for you, the ideal is to use your calf muscle to propel yourself forward at the end of the stride and to land mid-foot or ball of foot. Your arches may also hurt, because you’re engaging them in your running also. Your stride will also be shorter and faster. But after you get used to running further forward on your feet, you’ll find that you’re a LOT more efficient, and that it’s hard to run slowly. You’ll also find that you overpronate a LOT less, and can get away with lighter shoes in training and racing.

On our video system, I can see that people who land on the ball of their foot have the first impact with the ground directly below their knee or even behind their knee. That means they are pushing themselves forward the entire time their foot is on the ground. I also see that their foot is on the ground for a lot less time, and they are “in flight” a lot more. These aren’t sprinters, these are fast 10kers and 1/2 marathoners and one sub 2:25 marathoner.

Try this: stand in a place where you have a good 20-30 feet of runway in front of you. Start jogging in place. Notice: you’re on the balls of your feet, and your heels are not touching the ground. You feel light and springy. Now if you lean your shoulders forward, you’ll start running forward. That’s it. That’s efficient running form. To run faster, you focus on lifting your heels higher, which lenghtens your stride. You can do that as a form drill, then build up to short intervals to program the form in your brain. Be sure to allow plenty of recovery – form work is not speedwork.

Try this: take off your shoes and run barefoot, landing on your heels first. Hurts, doesn’t it? That’s because your heels are absorbing a lot of energy slowing you down every time you land. Your body naturally wants to land on the balls of your feet when you’re barefoot. When you put shoes on, you can get away with landing on your heels, and we get lazy.

It’ll take a few weeks to get used to running with different form, after which you can start to build the muscles to sustain that form for longer. You’ll break 20:00 on the 5k easily, and you’ll be less likely to injure yourself along the way.

Lee Silverman
JackRabbit Sports
Brooklyn, NY

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Hey Cerveloguy

I’m in agreement with most of the other postings here. Go tot the track and do short interval work. Repeat 200s to improve running form and my favourite set for building speed/endurance is 10-12 x 400 with 1 minute recovery. No other workout gets my cruising speed up better than that one. The other thing that works well is to incorporate some strides (accelerations for 60 - 80m) to work on form and stride length after every run that you do. You’ve posted before about being in eastern Ontario … depending on how close you are to the Belleville/Trenton area you’re welcome to drop by a track practice (today is my high school track team’s first of the season) for some guidance.

Allan

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Hi there , i do sprint tris also and my running is by far and away my weakest even , however i have also found that it seems no matter how hard i train , i cant get quicker although i am a big guy .

I adopted a different approach , i picked the 2 events i am good at and made myself even better , eg… if say you trained really hard and well at your weak event and gained 2 mins , which is huge , i have heard it said that a 10% gain is the max you can achieve , however if you train harder and gain the 2 - 10% on your strong events you have saved more time if you get my drift , at the end of the day tri is about theclock and it doesnt matter how you reduce the time , as long as you do.

For instance i knnow i will be top 5 out of the water in my class , and top 10 out of the bike , there fore my run is to completion , so if i continue to make my stong events quicker then my race time will still reduce , maybe this is a little bit defeatest but its worked for me

16

…I really appreciate all your help. I want to make every mile count so it seems that I should come up with the right combo of long runs, speed work and hill work.

I started running again a couple of weeks ago and have been at this point mostly trying to build base but am entered in a 5 km race this weekend. I haven’t run much this winter due to the weather but have been doing a fair bit of X-country skiiing as a substitute.

I’ve actually found that for the first time, I’m actually starting to enjoy running now that I have a specific goal to work at.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

17

actually the 30-30 workouts mentioned above have been shown to increase running efficiency as well/.

I’ve been doing 60-60 instead of 30-30 as it was an easier sell to the people I’ve been running with. Does it have about the same benefit?

My understanding is that all VO2max type work should be at about 3k to 5k pace and work and rest should be equal and that the interval time should be between 30sec and 4min 30secs or so. Is there any real physiological differences between a 30-30 and a 180-180 workout if pace during recovery and work effort are the same.

Thanks,

Matt

19

CV,

A few simple easy things you could insert in your training that would yeild some good results:

  1. After every run do 10 X 100 strides starting off easy and building up to and then past 5K race pace

  2. Run in hilly terrain as aften as you can and even on “longer” runs really work the uphills or find a 200 - 400m hill and do 5 - 10 repeats at 5K race effort walk/jog back to the bottom.

  3. Know that 5K race pace is roughly equivelent to V02 max level of intensity( slightly slower actually), so know that any effort that forces you to run at that pace or slightly faster will be helpful

Hope this helps.