PR'ing in the 5k or 10k while training for HM or marathon. Did you do this?

Most of my PR's come after training for marathons, where I do very little speedwork (in terms of 5k specific work). I attribute it to overall strength and pain tolerance, but really don't know.

It is because they are focusing more on the aerobic work that they need. Under developed runners (most of us who are not East African or professionals) will get much more benefit at every distance from the middle distances and longer by focusing on more work at lactate threshold pace and slower. I'm not really surprised by this tbh.

You cannot underestimate the power of consistent training. If these are relatively newish runners (let’s say they training semi seriously for less than 5 years or so) they should be improving whether they are smashing workouts or not as long as they are consistently putting in miles at a moderate intensity. Each year should build on top of the last. My training is not very difficult at all but I’ve stayed injury free for the 4 ish years I’ve been running and I keep on improving. No need to kill myself as long as I keep steadily improving.

Generally it's a combination of running more and doing more work which builds up rather than tears down.

All of those Daniels and Pfitz plans have too much intense work. It's good in theory but bad in practice for almost every average runner.

Seriously mate? wrote:

You cannot underestimate the power of consistent training. If these are relatively newish runners (let’s say they training semi seriously for less than 5 years or so) they should be improving whether they are smashing workouts or not as long as they are consistently putting in miles at a moderate intensity. Each year should build on top of the last. My training is not very difficult at all but I’ve stayed injury free for the 4 ish years I’ve been running and I keep on improving. No need to kill myself as long as I keep steadily improving.

I trained consistently for a couple years stretch in college, then got less consistent after graduating. Did a marathon training block (only 8 weeks or so) and was in PR shape for 10k and possibly 5k.

It's not necessarily only new runners that experience this. Personally I respond well to longer, more aerobic workouts than I do to faster stuff like 3k-5k training. The sweet spot for me is probably half marathon training, but I think the fear of the marathon is what makes people train just a little bit smarter or harder, which results in faster performances at all distances.

Most of the runners at your club run significantly more mileage when training for a marathon and therefore some pb over shorter distance.

Elite runners are not doing Vo2 max work for the fun of it. Perhaps you know better than them

Meant my club!

... good HM training shouldn't look very different than good 5k/10k training. Proper marathon training should look a lot different than 5k/10k specific training, but as others have noted, the concentration on aerobic development during proper marathon training is a core part of eventual preparation for 5k/10k. You might not necessarily run your lifetime best 5k during marathon training, but you could surely make partial gains along that path...

theJeff....why did you create this thread?

Hear, hear. I've come to think that Daniels is a disaster for this very reason. I see HS coaches and adult runners following Daniels schedules and the workouts are just insanely hard for the caliber of runners doing them. To take an example from a recent workout I saw an adult running club doing, 6 x 1200 at 5km pace w/ 3 mins jog/walk. For an 18 minute 5km runner who runs 50 miles per week, that's a ridiculous workout but straight out of the book as an I-workout (not more than 10km nor 8% of weekly volume). I'm starting to think that Daniels has done more damage than good...

it's like... wrote:

...

All of those Daniels and Pfitz plans have too much intense work. It's good in theory but bad in practice for almost every average runner.

I agree that it is the increase in aerobic work for people who needed the work.

When you get serious about running a good marathon (for you at your level) you can't get around the need for building an aerobic base. The rising tide of aerobic base lifts all boats. You get faster at all paces. After hobby jogging for 15 years, I spent 9 months of steady base building before going into a Pfitz marathon cycle... a cycle that had destroyed me rather than strengthened me in the past. Suddenly I found the Pfitz training empowering. I went from 3:30 to 3:15 in the marathon at age 49. Last week I broke my 10k PR on a Daniels T-pace run. My threshold pace is now faster than my former 10k race pace... and I am NOT a beginner. If you lack a strong aerobic base, build it. You may not rock THE world, but you can sure as hell rock your own world.

BLACK CAVIAR wrote:

theJeff....why did you create this thread?

Lol, wasn’t me... but I did think it was funny that it got started like 2 days after mine.

Daniels is a disaster wrote:

6 x 1200 at 5km pace w/ 3 mins jog/walk. For an 18 minute 5km runner who runs 50 miles per week, that's a ridiculous workout

why?

I am a decent 5k runner (hobby jogger by LRC standards, of course), and a Daniels devotee, but I rarely go above 5 x 1200 (even if I am at 70 miles per week or more), and usually run 4 x 1200. The workout itself is not a bad workout - it is probably one of the more important workouts I do other than tempo efforts. For the two guys I work with who have run OTQs, I give them 6 x 1200, and they sometimes knock it out, sometimes they adjust and cut it short. But for most runners, the toll of 6 x 1200 is too high to justify the benefit. But that isn't really bad physiology, it is bad coaching.

I have coached 4 people for marathons that were raced in the last 4-5months. 3 of those 4 set PRs for the 5k during their marathon cycles. I go with a Daniels-based approach with a big vo2max block from 18 to 12 weeks out then a tempo-centric approach with no vo2max work other than races after that. Of the 3 who set PRs, one set her PR (17:21) right around the time the vo2max block finished up, which makes sense. My masters road PR (15:28) came at the same time in my marathon training block. The other two however (16:44 guy, 17:20 woman) came in the last 2-3 weeks of the training cycle, which doesn't make a ton of sense on paper (except the 17:20 woman, despite being very good, never really put together a stretch of training and clean living like she did for that marathon block - and it showed when she set a two and a half minute PR in the marathon, unfortunately missing an OTQ by less than :30).

It is really surprising that no one has figured this out sooner. One would think that Shorter running an AR at 10,000 in the '72 Olympic finals just a few days before his gold medal performance or Salazar running just a second or two off of the AR behind Rono a week before the famous 'Duel in the Sun' would have lead others to ponder 'why does it happen'.

Smoove wrote:I have coached 4 people for marathons that were raced in the last 4-5months. 3 of those 4 set PRs for the 5k during their marathon cycles.

Hadd (and maybe Antonio Cabral too, but I don't remember) wrote (I think in the "2 kinds of runners, which are you" thread) that a ST-runner needs to be in shape to run a 10k PB close to marathon race day, but a FT-runner better not be, else they will crash and burn.

I am paraphrasing the words the way I remember processing them, and have likely misquoted...

Maybe that's my point. I think that most of the world is underdeveloped aerobically, even if you've been running for 5-10 years+ and that we should focus more effort here. I won't pick on Daniels too much- I've improved on his plans, but I think that they are taken too literally sometimes and assume the runner is aerobically developed. If the athlete were to talk to the man himself, I feel like he would probably tell them to do more aerobic work than you see in his model plans. Look at his vdot's. Does anyone know an 18:50 5k runner that can break 3 hours in the marathon? I don't think I know any. Nothing wrong with training at a variety of paces. It just seems that most runners need to devote a big piece of their training to aerobic, while deemphasizing the speed and v02 work.

[quote]why does this happen wrote:

If the athlete were to talk to the man himself, I feel like he would probably tell them to do more aerobic work than you see in his model plans. Look at his vdot's. Does anyone know an 18:50 5k runner that can break 3 hours in the marathon? I don't think I know any.

[quote]

You mean the part in Coach's book where he says to run as many easy miles as possible without impacting the two - just two - quality workouts, one of which is sometimes just a long run? Or do you mean the part where he says you should have a sufficient base developed even before you start his plans?

Also, I don't think you understand the VDOT value. Perhaps you need to reread Daniels.