skipping the tempo every week for a race effort 3 or 4 mile run, how long will this work if at all

Intervals (eg. 5x[1000m @5k pace w/400m jog]) are more like a race effort. Tempos are something different. Keep the tempos, skip the intervals.

How do you define success or failure? If you do this, nothing really bad is likely to happen to you.

zesty pesto wrote:

Considering dropping my tempo runs for about 4 to 6 weeks and in place run 3 to 4 miles pretty damn hard. The rest of the week will be easy and maybe one speed workout once every 8 days like 400m repeats keeping it short. How long Will this work, or am l setting myself up for faliure? Tell me straight! Thanks

It's called any XC student at any level during the season. You'll be fine. Unclear what you define as "failure." Are you worried about injury or slowed improvement?

I did that pretty much for 8 months straight. I had some problem with a disc in my back around February so the first few races were getting recovered as it affected my diaphragm muscles along with my quads.

I was steadily improving but really ran well my 11th race which was a 10k. The next race I ran even better in a 5k running faster than I had in the previous 4 years. Two weeks later I ran another 10k 45 seconds faster than the previous one. That ended up being my best 10k of the year and was the 14th consecutive week I had been racing. In the 17th week I ran a comparable 4 mile and in the 19th week I ran a great 5 mile race. A week later I ran a mile on the road which was just slightly better than all the other races on an age grade comparison. So that was 20 weeks on a row of racing. After continuing to race mostly 5k for 6 more weeks, I moved up to a 10 mile which was the 27th straight week of racing. In the 32nd straight week of racing I ran a half marathon and again ran very comparable to my best races at all the other distances. After 34 straight weeks of racing, I took a week off and then ran a 10k. Took two more weeks off and ran a marathon. Marathon went well for only averaging 35 mpw but was not as good as the other distances. (7 minutes slower than predicted)

That's a lot of races...

OP, what race are you training for? Using races as workouts is fairly common. Doing solo time trials seems pointless though.

Well, hell I feel like I might just get going this week. 34 week straight weeks sounds crazy though, but after reading your success I think I've been stuck in base mode for too long and just got used to it lol

I usually race the half marathon about 4 times out the year and a 5k maybe 2 or 3 times a year. I spend alot of time just running easy miles, then one tempo a week, and some speedwork. strides after all my easy runs. my long run is usually 14 miles my weekly average is 45mpw. I think I've just gotten so used to the base phase for too long, I know how boring, and I'm now realizing it. I'll start increasing weekly mileage after my next HM. And yeah I was going to do pointless times trials in place of my tempo runs and make those a distance of 3 to 4 miles in length and just run them at a race effort. I don't wanna spend 25 dollars every weekend racing 5ks and all the travel involved too since I work nearly every Saturday to make things more complicated. I figured my quickest solution was to noob out and race my tempo runs for a while and see how it progresses. I have a HM in a couple weeks, and trying to think of how I wanna improve my 5k time over the next 6wks before I get back to another HM I have in mind for March.