10k under 35 minutes

What I did to drop from 35:52 to 33:35 in one season:

1) Run 6 days a week at least, twice a day (6km in a.m. Mon-Fri)

2) run at least 60 miles per week

3) long runs of 15-16miles on Sunday at easy pace (7-7:10/mile)

4) Steady state run at HM pace on Monday (6-8miles) started at 6:20/mile for 10km in May and by August was doing 8miles at 5:45 pace..was not a hard workout but did the trick

5) Tuesday 8-12 reps of 400m @ 3000m (1:12-1:10) pace w/1:15 min rest

6) Wednesday easy (6km morning,10km afternoon)

7) Thursday repeats of 3 X 1km on road at 5km pace with 2min rest, unless a race on weekend...by August these had dropped from 3 X 1km in 3:20-:25 to 3:05-:10.

8) Friday: same as Wednesday

9) Saturday-no running, maybe long bike ride or nothing

Also dropped my 5000m time from 17:35-17:02-16:35-16:25-16:05 and HM from 1:22 to 1:17 (on a cold, windy and rainy day).

Hi

Thanks for that

just one question do you have any "rest week" like every 4th week or something?

//Thomas

What he said seems to be pretty close to what I did in college (33:30 10K).

I ha dthe benefeit of running with a team but, we had 2 days of speedwork. 2 plain distance runs(8-12 miles) an easy day, a day off or a day to race, and then a long run (12-15 miles)

so a typical week for us would be:

Sunday - 12-15 miles

Monday - Longer Intervals 1200 or mile repeats w/warmup and cooldown

Tuesday - 10-11 miles

Wednesday - shorter intervals 200's, 400's, and 600's repeats or ladders. w/ warmup and cooldown

Thursday - 7-9 miles

Friday - 3-5 miles EASY

Saturday - off or a tuner race

I think i only took easy weeks during teh week I was trying to peak for, everything leading up to that is all building one one another.

Hope this was helpful, and good luck!

The Bear

Why in the world would you stack your three hardest days of the week back to back to back? Especially when your Fri/Sat/Sun is so easy?

A lot depends on your weight and how you respond to different training.

what is you hgt wgt ratio ?

I ran 60mpw no intervals or speed work .Mostly varied routes on hilly terrain and upping the pace on the hills.

Speed work etc used to break me down so i responded better mentally and physically to longer periods of mileage ,say av 8 weeks of 60 mpw.

Even now at 47 when i try speed work i break down and i get the same results from consitant steady rather than sparodic fast millage.

So in summary ,get your wgt down and aim for (Whatever you can handle ) a consitant millage.

Its an old cliche but find out what works for you.

I know this is not what you want to hear because you want to be told top run x session and y millage and you will hit 33/34 mins but it does not work that way.

With a personel coach it may but not with advise from a forum.

One last thing ,Tim Noakes recomends running up to 70 mpw ,see how you perform and then add speedwork.

Good advise i think

Thanks all for the good advices!

When i first start running i did the 10k on 43 minutes and that training I did most do sub39 was to do many training in theshold pace like 10x1000m whit 1 minutes rest between each and now when i when from 39 to 37 was to do much speedwork on track once i week and the same LT (10x1000m) and on saturday a temporun for about 30-40 minutes (or 6x10 min/3x20m...) and the total millage per week is about 40-60 miles.

My weight is 65 kg and my height 179 cm...

I feel that a have potential to run much faster and train harder than i do now...

//Thomas

I would work on running daily and build up. to be good in the 10k you need to be strong, safely increase your mileage to increase your aerobic strength. Rome wasn't built in a day.

When I was running well, I liked to stack hard days together and then take the others to really recover and become stronger. I used this schedule to race well all summer. In the winter, I would go back to running base miles that were evenly spaced over the week. I crosstrained on the stairmaster instead of running the easy days so my schedule ended up being as follows.

sun-3-5 up, race , 3 down

hour stairmaster

mon-8 progression down to 18 min last 3 miles

tue-hour stairmaster am

hour stairmaster pm

wed-hour stairmaster am

hour stairmaster pm

thu-3 up, 8-400's with 400 jog, 3 down

hour stairmaster

fri-hour stairmaster

sat- off

Early in the summer when I was running 4 days a week, I would run easy on monday and do a tempo run on tuesday. The rest of the week would look the same.

I ran 35:09 10k right before I turned 40 on this training.

My guess is that building up the mileage and then upping the quality of your tempo run will do it for you. To go from 40 10k to high 35 in seven months, I went from 40 mpw to 60 and then 80mpw and started running with a group, which got me doing sub-6 pace on tempos within just a few weeks. To drop nearly another two minutes at 10k, I lifted the mileage to 100, but otherwise the formula was the same as the guy above. easy runs at 6:30-7, with the occasional recovery run at 8-9 minute pace, long runs of 15-19 miles once a week, 400-2k repeats totaling about 4 miles on one day, tempos of 3-8 miles at 5:50 down to 5:20 pace once a week. I also would do progressions when I felt good on non-workout days. Another way to improve is to add a new element to your training: e.g. strides, hill sprints, long hill running, core, wts.

I am also thinking of adding some strenghtraining to and working on my running technique any ideas of what kind of workouts for this? and how often?

//Thomas

i am amazed at the above. So much training,doubling, so many long long runs... 35 minutes 10K should be very simple.

I would expect the following to result in 32-33mins after a full season, maybe even 31.xx

M 60mins

T 4x5mins 2mins recvery

W 60mins

T 5x3mins 90sec recovery

F rest

S 60mins OR 15x1min 1min recovery.

S 75mins

Estimated mpw = 50

If you did a morning run of 30-45minutes, i would expect you to crack 30mins for 10K in around 18months from where you are now.

Why does the morning runs have so big effect on the performance??? is it beacuse the are good as recovery and that you can train harder because of that??

//Thomas

simply additional miles. but doubling is hard. you will need to sleep well. 50-80mpw is a big difference in terms of development and results after 12months of training, as long as the intervals are present.

simple is best wrote:

i am amazed at the above. So much training,doubling, so many long long runs... 35 minutes 10K should be very simple.

I would expect the following to result in 32-33mins after a full season, maybe even 31.xx

M 60mins

T 4x5mins 2mins recvery

W 60mins

T 5x3mins 90sec recovery

F rest

S 60mins OR 15x1min 1min recovery.

S 75mins

Estimated mpw = 50

If you did a morning run of 30-45minutes, i would expect you to crack 30mins for 10K in around 18months from where you are now.

This is essentially the same schedule I ran during my freshman/sophomore years at college (very small school). I could barely break 35 minutes.

However, I'm pretty sure I know why. We had a few kids running 25 minutes for 5 mile XC races, much faster than my 27 minutes. I tried to be a workout hero and run all of the hard workouts with them. I was killing myself! We'd do the two hard workouts (Monday and Wednesday), and have a race on Saturday. We'd then do 1.5 - 2 hour runs on Sunday. I burned out and lost interest as a result, and quit running for years.

The point is, don't race your workouts!

simple is best wrote:

i am amazed at the above. So much training,doubling, so many long long runs... 35 minutes 10K should be very simple.

If you did a morning run of 30-45minutes, i would expect you to crack 30mins for 10K in around 18months from where you are now.

If it was that easy, everybody would be running 31 minute 10ks. I have never seen a great % of runners running 31 minute 10ks. 35 minute 10ks are in the top 2% of most road races. The world is a lot larger than elite college runners.

your right, i was a little closed minded in my view. but im still interested in this. Im observing club runners in europe.

Im observing 35-37minute 10k runners that join local clubs...

guys that come along and do the above diligently, in around a year will be running 33 and under 10K.

Guys that get serious and bump up to 2x per day are normally around 30flat in another year.

Guys that are pushing their milage up and doing more volume in sessions, but still with this same structure, will probably get to are running around 28-29.

The bulk of the people do the 1 a day, 6 day a week thing and linger around 31-33 min 10K.

The runs are at a good pace though. They tend to be competitive if people run together.

Christ ,i can not believe how dumb this post is.

simple is best wrote:

your right, i was a little closed minded in my view. but im still interested in this. Im observing club runners in europe.

Im observing 35-37minute 10k runners that join local clubs...

guys that come along and do the above diligently, in around a year will be running 33 and under 10K.

Guys that get serious and bump up to 2x per day are normally around 30flat in another year.

Guys that are pushing their milage up and doing more volume in sessions, but still with this same structure, will probably get to are running around 28-29.

The bulk of the people do the 1 a day, 6 day a week thing and linger around 31-33 min 10K.

The runs are at a good pace though. They tend to be competitive if people run together.

Those are metric minutes. There are 1000 metric minutes in a day (or a kilohour, as it is known in Europe), or 41.67 metric minutes in an hour. So, 30 metric minutes flat is not that impressive.

[quote]i have a theory wrote:

Christ ,i can not believe how dumb this post is. [quote]

Maybe the guy IS in a club in Europe, and maybe he DOES see guys come in and run 33 minutes with this training. I'd like to hear more about this program. Is there periodization involved? It does seem like a simple, effective way to run these kinds of times, assuming one has the genetic potential in the first place.