Is a 6 mile tempo run long enough?

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Age

Years running

Mpw

Racing goals

southern rick n role wrote:

Need much more info about you to answer.

Age

Years running

Mpw

Racing goals

+1

General rule is to slightly exceed race distance with tempo/threshold runs.

HS kids don't really need more than a 4-mile tempo. Longest race distance is 5k XC. I'd rather have top HS kids do a 4-mile tempo in 5:40/mi than a 6 mile tempo in 5:55/mi.

10k runners can do tempos up to 6-8 miles. Longer tempos need more recovery days.

runningislife3 wrote:

Just wondering if 6 miles is long for a tempo run?

For a 5K, too long. For a marathon, too short.

At what pace do you do ~30' tempo?

Doing it at LT pace looks really hard on a regular basis, I guess it is slower.

the best is 4 miles at lt pace

Its all about time and intensity

I used to do six mile tempo runs when training for half marathons. I'd do them around 88% of HR max. Just a beat or two below what I'd call the hard threshold. John Kellogg used to talk about the fastest aerobic pace you could maintain without allowing any tightness into the mix. Just above threshold you can feel your solar plexus tighten; you begin the drip-drip-drip of accumulating oxygen debt.

It's a subtle thing, but I used those long tempo runs to help me find, recognize, and maintain at that effort level.

It was Tinman, offering this wannabe a little free advice, who told me to run the first three miles of a HM no faster than that tempo, then slowly begin to crank it down. And that advice helped me run my masters PR. Most people start off a HM too fast, go slightly over the threshold, and are eventually forced to slow down. Long tempos teach you how to run within yourself early on. Something opens up when you do that; you're then able to run, for example, at 91% and it FEELS like 88%.

For a 5k? Perfect. Just slow down the pace to around marathon pace, you should be able to hold that comfortably but still be working hard aerobically. For LT, most athletes/coaches uses intervals at T pace instead of continuous runs. It’s easier to get more volume in and isn’t as difficult