After a pretty painful 5k on Saturday, a buddy and I decided we need to hit the track for some speedwork. Any links, advice, suggestions, etc. are welcome. Thanks!
I use this calculator to see what times I should be running my sprint/speed work in:
http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/mcmillanrunningcalculator.htm
I actually got the link off of here on another forum. Hope it helps you out.
Brad
Very cool! Thanks!
Skip the track and throw in long tempo sections in your normal easy training runs. Twice a week, maybe three times, do 4, 5, 6 miles at a “comfortably hard” pace. Do that for a couple of months with lots of easy mileage. Get those improvements.
Then start thinking about the track.
I’ve got a bunch of stuff written that you can find in the link in my sig line. Dan has changed the URL formatting, so the old links don’t work anymore. You’ll have to use the search feature, but they are out there (I plan to fix the URLs soon…maybe today).
One of the most important points I harp on is getting the proper mix of workouts in. For a 5K, yes you need “speed” and doing it will give you great improvements, but the amount that people need is often drastically over estimated. This thread will give you examples of balancing your workouts:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1836368;search_string=runtraining18;#1836368
You’ll need to click on the picture and enlarge it, but this is what you should see for a 5K (~20 minute race)
So lets assume you are running about 35 miles a week. 1st things first, when you add workouts, you will need to cut back your total mileage. Off the top of my head, I’d cut you back to 30 miles a week.
At 30 miles a week, I recommend (on average) 650 meters of “speed”, 4000 meters of V02max interval training, and 2.3 miles of LT training. These are all simply rough ball park numbers, but using these this is what I’d recommend:
Workout 1: 4x1,000m @5K race pace (or slightly faster) with 400m jogs in between. Finish with 3x200m @ 20 sec/mile faster with 400m jogs in between.
Workout 2: 20 minute run @5K race pace +25 sec/mile.
If this training load is to hard, then everything should be backed off in proportion. ie go to 25 mile weeks and cut workouts loads accordingly. If it is too easy, bump everything up.
Also keep in mind that none of these workouts should kill you and that everyone reacts differently. Again, these are just ballpark #s to get you started. I also consider this to be “race phase” training and rarely recommend holding this approach for more than 8-12 weeks for the majority of runners. Until you acheive veteran status, I recommend a significant base period be established before every racing season.
Thanks, this is what I needed to hear. Looking back on last seasons training, I was doing intervals/tempo runs/hill repeats at least once a week in prep for IM Lou. Guess I didn’t realize just how beneficial that was. Appreciate the help!
Good question. I had never done any track work until this past weekend. I had run a 1/2 Mary and done 2 1/2 IMs but was feeling like I forgot how to run fast (relative term).
Went to the track and did…
1600 warm-up
3 x 1600 hard (plus it was super windy)
1600 cool down
Legs were certainly feeling it yesterday, but it felt good to run “fast”.
JoeO offers some good advice. I don’t know about three times a week. I’d advise 1-2 times a week, but nevertheless, I prefer at least 15 weeks of tempo/threshold training before an A race. Depending on your level of ability, for a 5K you want a minimum of 6 weeks of track work (5k pace and faster) and usually no more than 12 weeks.
If you were to follow Joe’s advice for 6-8 weeks and then do what I suggested above for 6-8 weeks, you’d set yourself up for a really nice peak in the 5K.
So would it make any sense at all to do a tempo run one week and a track workout the next? What about one of each in a week? BTW, I keep a pretty good base-I guess you could say I’m a veteran. Eight marathons, 4 ultras, been at it since the early 90’s.
Thanks!
If you were to follow Joe’s advice for 6-8 weeks and then do what I suggested above for 6-8 weeks, you’d set yourself up for a really nice peak in the 5K. Thanks, you guys are awesome!
You need to build endurance at threshold intensity. I would recommend doing 400’s at threshold (8-12 reps) with short recovery…20-30 seconds.
This will mock a sustained threshold effort but toss in a bit of recovery. Build up to 16 reps over time.
So would it make any sense at all to do a tempo run one week and a track workout the next? What about one of each in a week? BTW, I keep a pretty good base-I guess you could say I’m a veteran. Eight marathons, 4 ultras, been at it since the early 90’s.
Thanks!
I usually only recommend that if the athlete’s volume is really low due to fitness, OR if the athlete once to run well for long periods of time, like from April thru October. I always advise that he’ll never reach his peak, but will be fairly strong throughout the season.
Like I said above, go 6-8 weeks of one threshold workout a week, and then 6-8 weeks doing to workouts. One would still be the threshold/tempo run and the second would be a track workout with intervals at ~5K race pace followed by a few 200s.