How fast can one get doing tempo and strides?

Additional info, i am coming off a 15k race last Saturday and have a half marathon planned for December. I am going to get my long run up to 15 miles in two weeks.

What distance do you intend to race?

List three PRs for different race distances.

How long have you been training?

Have you ever done repeats before?

Why can't you do repeats during the next 6 weeks?

You can get almost all the way but not quite there with just strides and tempo. If you do those as long as you can, you can still get faster with some sharpening. You'll improve 30 seconds to a minute for 5K if you add the speed.

I would suggest more miles overall. Do the schedule you have there, but whenever you feel you're able, add a mile to each run. If you're short on time now, maybe that comes as you gradually get faster.

I ran my fastest times at all distances from 400-half doing this. I never approached them by doing more "proper" training even though the sessions I did indicated I should have been able to.

I think racing a variety of distances is key to making this work though.

maybe this: wrote:

You can get almost all the way but not quite there with just strides and tempo. If you do those as long as you can, you can still get faster with some sharpening. You'll improve 30 seconds to a minute for 5K if you add the speed.

If you are still 30-60 seconds short of your best you are not 'almost all the way but not quite there'. What you are is someone who is, for themselves, in OK shape but nowhere near what they could be running if they did legitimately hard training.

CoolHat wrote:

If you are still 30-60 seconds short of your best you are not 'almost all the way but not quite there'. What you are is someone who is, for themselves, in OK shape but nowhere near what they could be running if they did legitimately hard training.

That's a valid perspective.

I think I would run the last 3.5 miles of Wednesday as 30/30 fartlek every other week with the last 0.5 as a cool down. Over the 24 or so reps of 30 seconds slowly squeeze the pace from 10k to 5k to 3k speeds. Try to keep the 30 second rests at a pace so that you average about 5 mile tempo pace.

Ok I'll continue to make the most of my runs for now. Not a bad idea to fartlek the Wednesday run. I try to keep the pace mostly easy during the week, so i can put some heat into my tempo runs. I do a fast finish long about once a month. I'll press the pace close to goal next half marathon goal pace for 5 to 6 miles. I can't do true repeats right now until I'm feeling better. I'm nearly fully recovered from some piriformis issues and not wanting to risk my summer training for a couple of minutes running fast. Anything over a 400m at 95% effort pisses off my old injury. So I'm gonna do what my body allows for now. The 6wk layover is just my busy schedule between work, classes, and family. Once winter break comes around I'll have more time and next semester should be better scheduling. I might run a 5k as a benchmark in a few weeks. I definitely improved after my recent 15k race this past weekend. With my current regimen.