Doing easy, longer runs with immediate intervals at the end, something like 4x400 at race pace sometimes works well. I had very good results with that quite a few years ago. I first learned about it from Rick Sayre and reading about Steve Spence training.
I'm stuck around 18 flat for 5k. I was thinking of dropping interval workouts and doing two 20 minute tempo runs a week at threshold pace, with strides. Pace would be 6:10-15.
Could this work considering there would be no faster running, except for the strides?
I don't know if you are familiar with Dick Beardsley. He did not do interval sessions, instead he used to do fartleks along his runs. Not bad for a 2:09:37 guy in an era were super shoes did not exist.(Boston 2:08:53 but that doesn't count for a PR)
I'm stuck around 18 flat for 5k. I was thinking of dropping interval workouts and doing two 20 minute tempo runs a week at threshold pace, with strides. Pace would be 6:10-15.
Could this work considering there would be no faster running, except for the strides?
It seems like to me that which you have not done might help you the most, but be cautious doing any kind of training for the first time.
That said, "hard interval training" has ruined more runners than anything, and that's usually because they did not apply it in a gradual progression! It is unlikely that only doing one type of running will help you reach your goals very fast. Basework is important, strides, true speedwork specific to your event, tempo runs, fartlek, even some interval training are all important. You will not get a complete prescription anywhere and especially off a few paragraphs from a guy on LRC!
By far the thing that helped my teams progress the most is them finding out and doing proper warmups!
I'm stuck around 18 flat for 5k. I was thinking of dropping interval workouts and doing two 20 minute tempo runs a week at threshold pace, with strides. Pace would be 6:10-15.
Could this work considering there would be no faster running, except for the strides?
I don't know if you are familiar with Dick Beardsley. He did not do interval sessions, instead he used to do fartleks along his runs. Not bad for a 2:09:37 guy in an era were super shoes did not exist.(Boston 2:08:53 but that doesn't count for a PR)
You are probably correct about Beardsley saying that he never did intervals. However, I doubt that there is a runner alive who did not do at least a few intervals. What coach would let you get away with that?
It's definitely possible. A famous exampke is Ron Clarke never did intervals and brought the WR for 10,000m from 28:12 to 27:39 in 1965 during a solo run on a cinder track. Most important is to build a big base (he ran from 100-110 miles a week mostly fast), and then race frequently to sharpen up during the competition phase.
No doubt Beardsley and Clarke claimed they NEVER did intervals. But come on, do you really think they avoided them COMPLETELY? I’m not about to spend hours correcting every single person who repeats that—it’d be a full-time job.
I ran high school cross country in the mid-1970s, and our entire varsity, runners 1 through 7, ran sub 6:00 pace or better in our races.
(Races were 2.5 miles back in the day, at least in my neck of the woods in upstate NY, so we're talking sub-15:00 for our slowest guy. I know whereof I speak, because I was our slowest guy and I broke 15:00 in my first race ever. I can assure you that our other guys were doing better to much better than that.)
So even our slowest guys were about as fast as you, or close. We did a lot of 440 yard intervals on the track, plus the usual group runs at various paces. I don't remember that our group runs were timed closely; we just kind of ran how we felt is how I remember it.
What we did seemed to work OK. Maybe we did too many 440 intervals, but I wouldn't have wanted us to do none at all. I don't think it's a good idea to run races at 5K or shorter without some interval training. You want to practice hammering repeat laps at sub-70 seconds and getting tired, so race pace doesn't feel too fast.
HRE - yes I only run 35-40 miles a week but I've been consistent for 2 years now.
I did a 1:22 flat half the other month so I'm basing my threshold pace off that (I went through 1 hour at 6:10 pace but with a positive split... it was a bad race).
The problem I have with interval workouts is I can't hammer them like other people. I struggle to do mile reps at 5:50 pace unless I have 3 minutes rest. But I can run tempo pace much easier.
That's a decent half for a guy stuck at 18:00. This makes me think that mileage is not your problem though I'm always one to say more miles will improve you. But we'll let that go here. I'm a fan of steady runs at a good clip so I like your idea and would encourage it.
I will make a comment about intervals in general and you in particular though. The kinds of interval sessions we used to do (yes, I am a sworn geezer, why hide it) to race at 10 km and down were usually things like 200s, 400s, 800s, maybe a ladder session. I think with your 5:50 mile reps you may be getting the worst of two worlds, not running fast enough to get your muscles adjusted to managing that pace well but still taking too much out of yourself to recover enough to benefit much.
If you want to keep some intervals in I'd suggest running that race pace or so, as sessions of 400s or at most 800s. I think something like 10-12 x 400 in around 85 would be a very good session. You can play around with the recovery but however you structure the session you want to make sure that your effort level in the later reps is about the same as in the early ones. You shouldn't be straining to maintain those times in the late reps. And you could do something similar with other distances too, you might want to if you get bored with 400s but I would not go longer than 800s. And I do like the tempo run idea as well. I'm just tossing out another idea here. You could mix things up, have a session of 400s or whatever AND a tempo run in your week.
Yeah, I'd think someone that could do 1:22 for the half off of only 35-40 mpw would be sub 17 easily.
You may be the prototypical "aerobic monster" typ. I agree with HRE on trying some shorter faster reps
Also, 20 min at 1/2 marathon pace might not be enough to really create the adaptations that you're looking for. You might want to try something that we call a "pull and glide" tempo. We run 200 fast and then float 400. We keep track of each 200m rep and also keep track of the time for the whole run. My slow twitch guys respond really well to this. The fast 200s are somewhere between 2 mile and 5k pace and the floats are 20-30 seconds per mile slower than what the kids do for their normal tempo runs. The instructions on the floats are to keep going as quickly as possible but slow enough to recover so that they can keep hitting their target times for the 200s. Toward the end, they're getting pretty tired, but can still hit slightly faster than current 5k pace on tired legs. They get big adaptations from this session. Our varsity guys usually end up going 6k -7200m total on this session. The whole thing averages out to about their current tempo pace.
It's definitely possible. A famous exampke is Ron Clarke never did intervals and brought the WR for 10,000m from 28:12 to 27:39 in 1965 during a solo run on a cinder track. Most important is to build a big base (he ran from 100-110 miles a week mostly fast), and then race frequently to sharpen up during the competition phase.
No doubt Beardsley and Clarke claimed they NEVER did intervals. But come on, do you really think they avoided them COMPLETELY? I’m not about to spend hours correcting every single person who repeats that—it’d be a full-time job.
Yes, I believe it. Why would he lie about that? He didn't have great speed because of it (and lost in every major championship), but could grind like no other, thats why he set around 30 world records. He did race as often as he could in xc and short distances on the track, so that's what kept/grew his turn over also.
No doubt Beardsley and Clarke claimed they NEVER did intervals. But come on, do you really think they avoided them COMPLETELY? I’m not about to spend hours correcting every single person who repeats that—it’d be a full-time job.
Yes, I believe it. Why would he lie about that? He didn't have great speed because of it (and lost in every major championship), but could grind like no other, thats why he set around 30 world records. He did race as often as he could in xc and short distances on the track, so that's what kept/grew his turn over also.
Clarke ran a lot of intervals in the first part of his career when he was coached by Franz Stampfl but said he became dissatisfied with that sort of work when he stopped improving by doing it. In his second career he did steady runs pretty much exclusively starting with an easy pace but going faster as the run went on. A normal run lasted about an hour and by the later bits he was often close to 4:30 mile pace. You also should know that he raced almost every week at anything from a half mile to ten miles. I have a hard time believing Beardsley did not run intervals. He trained with Bill Squires' guys and they did intervals a couple times a week.
Yes, I believe it. Why would he lie about that? He didn't have great speed because of it (and lost in every major championship), but could grind like no other, thats why he set around 30 world records. He did race as often as he could in xc and short distances on the track, so that's what kept/grew his turn over also.
Clarke ran a lot of intervals in the first part of his career when he was coached by Franz Stampfl but said he became dissatisfied with that sort of work when he stopped improving by doing it. In his second career he did steady runs pretty much exclusively starting with an easy pace but going faster as the run went on. A normal run lasted about an hour and by the later bits he was often close to 4:30 mile pace. You also should know that he raced almost every week at anything from a half mile to ten miles. I have a hard time believing Beardsley did not run intervals. He trained with Bill Squires' guys and they did intervals a couple times a week.
I think a lot of these didn’t do track intervals but did things like 2 hard/1 easy of the roads. Of a 15 miler with 3 min surges every 10 mins
It is easy to google Beardsley and see his training plan. It had plenty of things like 8x880.
Not a ton on Clarke () but several sources have talked about him doing straights and bends workouts. And honestly the rest sounds pretty much like modern training. How many other people are pushing doing 50-60mins of work in that LT1/LT2 zone. Doing it as intervals gives you a bit more control but the net training effect is going to be very similiar. I would love to see GPS logs of his training to see exactly what he was doing(how accurate were those run measurements) but we know these days you don’t need a ton of high intensity work. His races probably have plenty of stimulus for a 5k/10k guy.
Clarke ran a lot of intervals in the first part of his career when he was coached by Franz Stampfl but said he became dissatisfied with that sort of work when he stopped improving by doing it. In his second career he did steady runs pretty much exclusively starting with an easy pace but going faster as the run went on. A normal run lasted about an hour and by the later bits he was often close to 4:30 mile pace. You also should know that he raced almost every week at anything from a half mile to ten miles. I have a hard time believing Beardsley did not run intervals. He trained with Bill Squires' guys and they did intervals a couple times a week.
I think a lot of these didn’t do track intervals but did things like 2 hard/1 easy of the roads. Of a 15 miler with 3 min surges every 10 mins
It is easy to google Beardsley and see his training plan. It had plenty of things like 8x880.
Not a ton on Clarke () but several sources have talked about him doing straights and bends workouts. And honestly the rest sounds pretty much like modern training. How many other people are pushing doing 50-60mins of work in that LT1/LT2 zone. Doing it as intervals gives you a bit more control but the net training effect is going to be very similiar. I would love to see GPS logs of his training to see exactly what he was doing(how accurate were those run measurements) but we know these days you don’t need a ton of high intensity work. His races probably have plenty of stimulus for a 5k/10k guy.
There was a brief stretch of time when Lydiard talked Clarke into doing those straights and curves. But he told me Clarke never liked doing them and stopped doing them soon after beginning. Of course there are no GPS logs of his training but I've gotten pretty good descriptions of it both from Ron and from Trevor Vincent who was part of the group Ron ran with. I agree that the races had plenty of stimuli but he always thought the most important run he did was his Sunday long run.
I think a lot of these didn’t do track intervals but did things like 2 hard/1 easy of the roads. Of a 15 miler with 3 min surges every 10 mins
It is easy to google Beardsley and see his training plan. It had plenty of things like 8x880.
Not a ton on Clarke () but several sources have talked about him doing straights and bends workouts. And honestly the rest sounds pretty much like modern training. How many other people are pushing doing 50-60mins of work in that LT1/LT2 zone. Doing it as intervals gives you a bit more control but the net training effect is going to be very similiar. I would love to see GPS logs of his training to see exactly what he was doing(how accurate were those run measurements) but we know these days you don’t need a ton of high intensity work. His races probably have plenty of stimulus for a 5k/10k guy.
There was a brief stretch of time when Lydiard talked Clarke into doing those straights and curves. But he told me Clarke never liked doing them and stopped doing them soon after beginning. Of course there are no GPS logs of his training but I've gotten pretty good descriptions of it both from Ron and from Trevor Vincent who was part of the group Ron ran with. I agree that the races had plenty of stimuli but he always thought the most important run he did was his Sunday long run.
It is always everything. I expect if we had GPS logs we would learn he is doing 2-3 hours of work in that lt1-lt2 range and between a few fast miles and the races some vo2max work. Not a ton different than what people do today just structured a bit differently.
But it is always hard to figure out exactly Ron (or the kenayns) did with those progression runs. But several people have run fast on similiar stuff. I know a couple HS teams that do well in XC off the same basic idea. You run 50mpw at a quick pace and race yourself into shape…
I'm not sure why it would have been hard to figure out what Ron did with those progression runs. He told anyone who asked.
Never quite believed that he got down to 4:30 mile pace on his 1 hour runs. He claimed to be doing this work 5 times a week, with a 12 miler on Sat and a 2 hour run on Sun. He was certainly strong, but no one can sustain that. They were also running on a grass horse race track every week day, so running that pace on grass is even more unbelievable.
I'm not sure why it would have been hard to figure out what Ron did with those progression runs. He told anyone who asked.
Never quite believed that he got down to 4:30 mile pace on his 1 hour runs. He claimed to be doing this work 5 times a week, with a 12 miler on Sat and a 2 hour run on Sun. He was certainly strong, but no one can sustain that. They were also running on a grass horse race track every week day, so running that pace on grass is even more unbelievable.
I don't know why it's hard to believe that someone who could run 8:19 for two miles couldn't do say, the last couple miles of an hour's run in nine minutes or certainly the last mile in 4:30 or so. I once ran with a guy whose two mile best was a bit over 8:30 and he ran 9:20 for the last two miles. Ron never said that all of his runs ended up at 4:30 pace. He said that as the runs went on he'd go faster and he usually was under 5:00 in the late stages and sometimes would be around 4:30. And Ron usually raced on Saturdays but yeah, twelve miles sounds about right for the rare non racing Saturdays.
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Never quite believed that he got down to 4:30 mile pace on his 1 hour runs. He claimed to be doing this work 5 times a week, with a 12 miler on Sat and a 2 hour run on Sun. He was certainly strong, but no one can sustain that. They were also running on a grass horse race track every week day, so running that pace on grass is even more unbelievable.
I don't know why it's hard to believe that someone who could run 8:19 for two miles couldn't do say, the last couple miles of an hour's run in nine minutes or certainly the last mile in 4:30 or so. I once ran with a guy whose two mile best was a bit over 8:30 and he ran 9:20 for the last two miles. Ron never said that all of his runs ended up at 4:30 pace. He said that as the runs went on he'd go faster and he usually was under 5:00 in the late stages and sometimes would be around 4:30. And Ron usually raced on Saturdays but yeah, twelve miles sounds about right for the rare non racing Saturdays.
Never said it wasn't possible, just skeptical that he was doing that sort of work multiple times a week while running 100-110 miles with a hilly long run and a 12 miler also, especially on grass. These guys didn't have GPS watches so probably you have to take what they say with a grain of salt. 4:30 per mile is fast, it would be like closing an hour run with a 14:00 5k, his PB was 27:39 for 10k, so it would be an all out training run, and he didn't believe in training that hard.
I'm not sure why it would have been hard to figure out what Ron did with those progression runs. He told anyone who asked.
great tell us what he did. What was his mile splits for each mile during a 10 week build up? I have never seen anything close to that. I have seen well we start off around 6 and rapidly drop to about 5:20 and the last couple pushing 4:30. That isn’t very detailed.
Some elite guys have released complete training logs. The details often differ from 1 week summary descriptions.
If anyone's interested I tested my fitness at parkrun (albeit on a hilly course) and ran around 18:15. It felt pretty bad. I've been doing 30-35 MPW which is my typical mileage with around 6-8 miles at 6:10-6:25 (ranging from half mile reps to 2 mile reps). I will keep the 20 minute tempo but I've recently started doing some 400s and 800s. I'm averaging around 1:20-1:25 for the 400s and 2:45 for the 800s. Already feel much better. I've completely neglected any faster running. I thought I could improve on just threshold and sub threshold workouts but it wasn't happening after doing it for a year.
I'm not sure why it would have been hard to figure out what Ron did with those progression runs. He told anyone who asked.
great tell us what he did. What was his mile splits for each mile during a 10 week build up? I have never seen anything close to that. I have seen well we start off around 6 and rapidly drop to about 5:20 and the last couple pushing 4:30. That isn’t very detailed.
Some elite guys have released complete training logs. The details often differ from 1 week summary descriptions.
Ron did not do build ups. He did not keep splits with any regularity. What he did most days was a 5-6 mile morning run where his wife rode along on her bike and a weekday evening session of an hour or so at a horse track with friends. They started easily and ran together and picked up the pace as the run went on and guys dropping back as the pace got too fast for them. Now and again someone would check their pace but mostly did not. Often he ran in club race on Wednesdays and on Thursdays the run was longer and on roads rather than the horse track, usually 30 km. Derek Clayton came to that run and he and Ron hammered each other. No one else could keep up with the two of them. Saturdays were also usually a race but often if not racing he and Clayton would run to the site of the footy match that Ron's brother Jack was playing in and if not that usually another 10-12 mile run. But more often than not he raced. On Sundays he always did the big group run at Ferny Creek.
Again, this was pretty much what he did all the time if he wasn't overseas racing. There were no build ups and no regularly checked splits. He did have a short stretch of time when he added a lunchtime run of six miles. While he was doing that Sports Illustrated sent a reporter to do a story about Ron and wrote that three runs a day thing into the story but Ron didn't do it for very long. If you'd asked him what he did you'd have gotten the answer I've written here. I know because I asked. He could no more have given you splits from those runs than I can.
I don't know why it's hard to believe that someone who could run 8:19 for two miles couldn't do say, the last couple miles of an hour's run in nine minutes or certainly the last mile in 4:30 or so. I once ran with a guy whose two mile best was a bit over 8:30 and he ran 9:20 for the last two miles. Ron never said that all of his runs ended up at 4:30 pace. He said that as the runs went on he'd go faster and he usually was under 5:00 in the late stages and sometimes would be around 4:30. And Ron usually raced on Saturdays but yeah, twelve miles sounds about right for the rare non racing Saturdays.
Never said it wasn't possible, just skeptical that he was doing that sort of work multiple times a week while running 100-110 miles with a hilly long run and a 12 miler also, especially on grass. These guys didn't have GPS watches so probably you have to take what they say with a grain of salt. 4:30 per mile is fast, it would be like closing an hour run with a 14:00 5k, his PB was 27:39 for 10k, so it would be an all out training run, and he didn't believe in training that hard.
I'm not sure what you mean by multiple times a week. He did 10-12 mile runs with progressively faster paces multiple times a week but that doesn't mean the pace got to 4:30 in each run. And he never said how much distance he kept that 4:30 pace for once he got to it. Maybe it was a couple miles, maybe a half mile, maybe one of those options on one day and the other on another day.
But you're talking about someone with a best mile just over four minutes who could maintain 4:10s for a couple miles. Yes, for nearly all of us 4:30 mile is pretty fast. It really wasn't for a guy like Ron. And why would you need to take what someone like him said with a grain of salt just because there were no GPS watches? There were watches, he was running on horse track. He knew exactly how much distance he was covering.