sub 26 XC 8k

heyyo

thats a super old school workout. doesnt sound like OP's sort of style.

took yesterday off after my race, and was gonna take today off but my mom wanted me to go with her. did 9 with the first half easy 7:30ish but i somehow fell off for the 2nd half. ran like 8:40s for a couple miles (quite hilly but still slow). just didnt have it. need some easy days to recoup before getting back to training.

tomorrow will likely be 45-60 minutes to put me at 40 for this week. (2 days off)

Awesome thread that I've been following for quite a while. I just finished up my last season of college running (graduating) - ran 26:04 for 8k in my last race - bittersweet because it was a pr yet it was so close to my goal of sub 26. Anyway, aside from the OP what distances/times are you guys trying to hit during indoor? I am a more of a middle distance guy looking to run some open meets in December/Jan - looking to run sub 2:32 in the 1000 and sub 4:18 in the mile.

Took a week off after xc...last 3 weeks 30, 35, 45miles (I run very low mileage).

Recent workouts: 1k solo time trial in 2:38 (30, 31, 31, 31, 35) - rigged the last 200.

4mile tempo x 2: 22:39 and 22:45.

2x (200, 600, 200) - (30, 1:30, 29)(30, 1:30, 28) 200jog between intervals, 7min jog between sets.

6x800@2:16, 2:18, 2:20, 2:20, 2:28, 2:25 (2:30rest) poorly paced workout...goal was 2:20.

reed wrote:

heyyo

thats a super old school workout. doesnt sound like OP's sort of style.

took yesterday off after my race, and was gonna take today off but my mom wanted me to go with her. did 9 with the first half easy 7:30ish but i somehow fell off for the 2nd half. ran like 8:40s for a couple miles (quite hilly but still slow). just didnt have it. need some easy days to recoup before getting back to training.

tomorrow will likely be 45-60 minutes to put me at 40 for this week. (2 days off)

Which? The key was the Tuesday stuff: 3xmile, 6x800 or 10-12x400 WITH short rest and slower than race pace. Nothing old school about that.

The rest of the week is sprinkled with fartleks and strides. I'm not sure what's so old school about either of those. They're called unstructured workouts, you do them during the middle of a distance run, and they are good to do early in the winter.

I mistyped that. I meant that it seems old school in general, with some fast running most days.

Ended up with 40 last week

This week will be in the 60s probably.

letsbang wrote:

Anyway, aside from the OP what distances/times are you guys trying to hit during indoor? I am a more of a middle distance guy looking to run some open meets in December/Jan - looking to run sub 2:32 in the 1000 and sub 4:18 in the mile.

nice times there, you mid-d guys scare me. doing 600s in 1:30 during workouts? insanity

i'm not racing indoors, but a 5k time trial might happen in mid-february where i'll try to break 15:30 to get that out of the way

my season starts in march. theres a low-key season opener where i'll probably run a 3k (sub 9 is the goal). then we have the ben brown invite where i'll run my first 5000m, hopefully 15:20ish. then a 10k in late march, hopefully 32:00ish. from then i don't know. i'll do one or two 1500s, maybe 4:09? i'm not big on speed but i'll work on it. an 800 might be fun to try in there somewhere. goal would just be 2:05 probably

fair enough. still i think its the wording that makes it seem old school. The fast running most days is just strides. The idea is, early on in the season, to maintain strength and then fine tune speed and quickness through frequent strides. It just seems like the OP did a great job of improving his endurance throughout the fall and now has made too sudden of jump to mid-d stuff. People do this all the time. They hold their endurance for a month or so and then it starts to fade rapidly. It'd be a shame to throw away all that endurance.

John Kellog, aka JK, had section on this in his writing. The really challenged part he says is getting the progression right. It's tough because after 4-5 months of XC training there's this desire lose patience and jump into the fast stuff. I'm just trying to help the OP avoid that.

good point

i wonder when i should begin to throw in some actual speedwork (faster than 5k) if my goal is just to run well at 5k and to run okay at 1500 and 10k.

last year i did the regular 5k training stuff up until may when i started doing a few 1500 workouts. the workouts were to prepare me for a june 1500 attempt.

may 3rd: 6x400 in 68.9 w/90sec jogs then 2x200 in 32, easy. i recall this being a bad day, maybe 80%

may 10th: 4x400 in 68.2 w/90sec rec then 4x300 in 49.4 w/90sec rec then 4x200 in 31.4 w/90sec rec. felt good

may 17th: 12x300 in 51.5 w/60sec jogs

got injured a couple days later, quit the 1500 stuff.

i was probably in 4:32ish mile shape, after a full season of racing 5000m. if i had focused on just 1500m i may have run 4:13-4:15 i'd guess.

Question: based on that summary of my speed workouts, how is my speed for a 5k guy? is it worth working on all winter, or just starting in february?

No I agree with you heyyo. I am thinking of doing a longer workout once every two weeks though. Either tonight or Saturday morning I'm thinking of doing an endurance type workout. Maybe something like a 4mile tempo or 4x1600m with a 1 minute jog recovery. What do you think of those for possible workouts? I'll also mention this to my developmental coach. However, 6x800s is decent conditioning for an 800/1600 guy in my opinion. 2:24s are a bit slower than my 3200m pace (hopefully).

Also I would like to point out that I have not made a full transition to mid distance workouts because I have not yet run at 1600m pace or even 800m pace.

Tonight I have a workout but I am not sure what it will be. Will post back later with results of how it goes.

Reed: you need to work on your speed a decent amount through the winter. For comparison last year I did that 12x300 workout as 2 sets of 6x300 with 60seconds in between each rep and 5 minutes in between sets. I averaged 46.75 seconds per 300m on a concrete road early in the season last year. I can also confirm the 300m was measured correctly.

heyyo: how important do you find strides to be? I never do strides, but if you think I could gain significant benefits from them, then I will certainly be willing to change that.

Saturday: 64 minutes (probably around 6:50 pace)

Sunday: 13 mile long run 7:07pace

Monday: 48:30 EZ

Tuesday: 50:20 EZ (probably 6:50 pace)

Letsbang,

Are you sure 26 flat was your 8k goal and not 2515??? NICE workouts.

It's going to be fun to follow you guys this indoor track season.

Try Hard Go Far wrote:

Tonight I have a workout but I am not sure what it will be. Will post back later with results of how it goes.

Reed: you need to work on your speed a decent amount through the winter. For comparison last year I did that 12x300 workout as 2 sets of 6x300 with 60seconds in between each rep and 5 minutes in between sets. I averaged 46.75 seconds per 300m on a concrete road early in the season last year. I can also confirm the 300m was measured correctly.

for your bi-weekly endurance workouts, why stop at 4 miles? i think you can still benefit from more than 20-25 minute tempos. maybe 2x3mi or 2mi, 2mi, 1mi. doesnt need to be continuous.

how would you recommend i start off the speed stuff? and when? i think hills would be a good start, and i could start now. keep in mind that my talents do not lie in anaerobic events. i've got enough speed as it is, and i can out-kick 90% of the guys near me, but i think i need to have a bit better speed endurance if i want to run close to sub 15.

I get most of my ideas from John Kellogg. His says that strides are important for maintaining efficiency and leg turnover during base and pre season training. Strides are important, but basically everything is important. No one thing is going to make or break you. Anyway just do them at least 1 time a week after your more aerobic runs, i.e. in this past week it would have been Saturday and not Monday definitely, and maybe Tuesday.

For your workout (assuming you got to about 26 8k shape), either of those sound like good workouts. I'd do the 4 mile tempo something like: 1 mile / 5 minutes at around 5:35ish, and then the next 3 at 5:25 and then do an extra half mile to 3:00 minutes, working down from 5:05+ish to 4:45ish. These are all rough, but the middle 3 should feel like you could run that long for 40 minutes or so. Have you ever done like an all run, where you go out 30 and then come back as hard as you can? I'd say the middle three miles is right around that. The workout should be fun and should be right at the point of hard but not quite there.

Otherwise you could do 4x1600 starting at 5:25 and working down to no faster than 5:05. 1 minute recovery. Anything from 5:25 to 5:15 should be good. These paces very quite bit from day to day, depending on how much you've run, what you ate, how you slept etc. So go off feel, but they shouldnt feel like knee grabbing workouts like a traditional mid-d workout would.

See what your coach thinks as well.

It sounds like your speed is pretty average to me. Those are about the times I'd expect for a mid to low 4:30 miler. If you can't smoothly run under 300 for a 200m, i.e. without straining, you probably only have average speed.

I'm pretty similar. I personally need to do speed stuff all year round other wise I lose my turnover, and end up with a shorter stride without much "clawback".

I think the idea is to start with strides, and once those are worked into your routine you can built up slightly more intense speed work type workouts. Also you could consider adding in 5-6x100m uphiill sprints. These really come from the opposite direction then what you did last spring. I.e. you start with like 2 sets of (2x100m) with full recovery between and then the next week you do 2 x 3x100m, and then add in 50m or for two weeks. Then do some shorter time trial on the 5th week like an 800m time trial.

The 6x400m stuff is more of that lactic-y acid type stuff. That's like the bread and butter get ready to race a mid-distance workout. It's not what you use to improve your speed. This short stuff is more about honing and sharping your speed after/while you build a monster aerobic engine. The repeats shouldnt' be so hard or so long that you ever tie up. As you get better at it, you'll be able to go longer without tieing up. Once you tie up you might as well stop.

Well, I guess I will be doing a tempo on Saturday, today's workout was definitely a unique one.

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

total: 40x100m

The sprints were all right around 15 seconds flat on average, while the curves were jogged at just under 8:00 pace for average of just under 6:00 pace

I felt this workout went pretty well. I did it in flats and to top it all off it was 32 degrees while I was doing it in shorts I might add. It served as a good wakeup call to my sprint speed, and was getting closer to my 800m pace for the first time this season.

Bdubs wrote:

Letsbang,

Are you sure 26 flat was your 8k goal and not 2515??? NICE workouts.

It's going to be fun to follow you guys this indoor track season.

Yeah like I said I do really low mileage (40-55mpw during xc) and as a result the 8k is really pushing it a bit on the endurance side of things. As much as I love xc, track is much more where I feel at home. It is interesting that we have very similar prs (8:56 3k, 15:52 5k) though. I also ran 26:04 on a fast xc course...so on a fast road course I imagine I would have been under 26.

Yesterday: 3mi tempo 16:58 (5:40, 5:41, 5:37) then 3x200@26 r/3min

A couple of easy days now...racing a 1k on Sat

Try Hard Go Far wrote:

Well, I guess I will be doing a tempo on Saturday, today's workout was definitely a unique one.

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

jog 1 lap

sprint the straight float the curve: 5 laps

total: 40x100m

The sprints were all right around 15 seconds flat on average, while the curves were jogged at just under 8:00 pace for average of just under 6:00 pace

I felt this workout went pretty well. I did it in flats and to top it all off it was 32 degrees while I was doing it in shorts I might add. It served as a good wakeup call to my sprint speed, and was getting closer to my 800m pace for the first time this season.

I actually like that workout. I've never been 100% where it fits into the grand scheme but the average pace can work out to be tempo if you trim a couple seconds off the curves, which is pretty attainable so long as you float/coast into the start of the curve. To average 8:00 pace on the curve with a running start into the curve you may have been running pretty slowly just prior to starting the 100m sprint.

In the past with teams I've done things like 3x12 laps of jog the curves, stride the straights, all continuous. Works out to a really solid effort.

Anyway that's a good workout, but with the average at 6:00 plus the 1 lap jog between, it's a little soft on the aerobic side. As you're breathing and heart rate were likely not a constantly high enough level. It was probably more of a relaxed speed session, given how it was approached. Definitely try for a tempo this weekend.

I have done better at 8k and up (112 HM), while my mile pr is en route (444) during my 3k pr....I would bet 210-214 is all I could muster for an 800

Your 200s (26) are faster than I could ever run even one 200. I bet your more successful XC season combined with good natural speed will result in a big 3k PR...840?

Does this thread need a new title?

Reed, Trying to go Far, others...what will it take indoors to make your teams?

bdubs wrote:

Reed, Trying to go Far, others...what will it take indoors to make your teams?

it would probably take 14:40s to get any interest from the D1 coach at my school, so that's out. that or 3:55ish for 1500m

Reed, have you talked to him? Even if you don't get a roster spot right away he might let you train with the team for a while. As far as dropping times...you never know what can happen. 14:40 might be closer than you think...