5km-Half Marathon Training: Volume vs Sessions

There is no correct answer, since there is more than one way to skin the cat. You appear to have done what is referred to in the literature as "Polarization Training".

1. What was your 5k fitness before you embarked upon the 14 week program?

2. What did your 'session workout' consist of (including paces)?

1. My PB has improved from 17:51 at the beginning of the block down to 17:27.

2. The workouts were a quite varied. Mainly time based reps ranging from 3 minutes to 8 minutes. I'd usually do 3 x 8 minutes or 6 x 3 minutes both having 2 mins jog recovery and some weeks would be straight 25-30 min tempos.

I didn't do any short reps like 200m-400m and have never really done anything 'fast' like this. I do strides twice per week but that's as far as it goes.

Also to note - workout paces were more conservative than what i've done in the past. i'd previously fallen into the trap or running workouts too fast following the old adage hard on hard days and easy on easy days.

both. 17:30 isn’t bad off your current training but I think you should be aiming to get to at least 60 miles in each week and I’d argue 2 sessions are the way to go. How far is your long run? Cap it at 10 miles and make the 2 sessions count.

Both volume and intensity are important.

But usually speaking it's better to start by increasing volume, then intensity.

If you've been following your current routine since a little while and feel like you could improve it. I would advice to first up the milage.

So increase milage first, in my opinion.

You should do at least 2 quality workouts per week and get rid of the long runs

Do both! wrote:

both. 17:30 isn’t bad off your current training but I think you should be aiming to get to at least 60 miles in each week and I’d argue 2 sessions are the way to go. How far is your long run? Cap it at 10 miles and make the 2 sessions count.

This^

Make your training sessions top priority over that weekly total. Your long run doesn't need to look like you are training for a marathon.

EZ10Miler wrote:

Do both! wrote:

both. 17:30 isn’t bad off your current training but I think you should be aiming to get to at least 60 miles in each week and I’d argue 2 sessions are the way to go. How far is your long run? Cap it at 10 miles and make the 2 sessions count.

This^

Make your training sessions top priority over that weekly total. Your long run doesn't need to look like you are training for a marathon.

If running 60 miles per week and capping the long run at 10 miles, this means every day has to be longish?

Doubles. Even at 60 miles per week

Alfie wrote:

EZ10Miler wrote:

This^

Make your training sessions top priority over that weekly total. Your long run doesn't need to look like you are training for a marathon.

If running 60 miles per week and capping the long run at 10 miles, this means every day has to be longish?

Yes. Or it means none of the days are very long, which is the point.

Good advice here, but I'll add that you don't necessarily need to do two sessions and a longer run in a 7 day period. If you take at 2-3 days between harder efforts, you might find yourself on a 9-10 day cycle. As you increase, listen to your body and don't force things just to fit a 7 day week.

Even without the doubles, if OP focuses on running 8 miles everyday with Tuesdays including some quick intervals and Fridays being a tempo: (2 mile warm up, 4 tempo, 2 cool down) the other 5 days are 8 miles easy which based on 5km pb id say he covers 8 miles in around 60 mins then you’ve got a great training week there in my opinion. That’s 56 miles per week for now. Easy to slowly build volume on to this structure.

Long run every other week is also a good option. And even then doesn’t have to be super long. 90-100 minutes.

Thanks for all the replies so far - very helpful.

I've been doing long runs around the 12-14 mile range. At the beginning of the year they were a bit longer as i was initially training for a marathon but since that's been cancelled i'd dropped them down to 12-14.

From whats been said i could do without them entirely? Or shorten again down to 10 miles? I currently do a mid week 10 mile run and usually 12-14 on Sunday so would it be better do just do one 10 mile run and increase the length of all the others as well as doing the 2 workouts? Overall weekly volume doesn't really change but i think all runs would be above 7 miles...

Introduce that second session and nothing else for the time being. When I said do both I didn’t necessarily mean go out and do both starting immediately.

Going forward, add your second session and keep everything else as it is. Listen to your body as the second session may make you feel a bit tired but it will pass. Based on what you’ve said you got a 10 mile run and a 12 mile run already in there and then your easy runs. Maybe take the 12 miles down to 10 if you are noticing the effects of the second session.

Now you have a 50+ miles per week with 2 sessions. You should start to get some adaptions from this. After say 6-8 weeks of hitting this consistently you can look to add a bit of volume. Slowly lengthen your easy runs. You can put the long run back in if you want but I’d argue doing 2 10 milers is enough but eventually try and get to the point where you’re running 10 miles per day and doing this in doubles is quite nice. Recovery is better. A good structure would be to do 10 miles in each session inc. warm up/cool down and one 10 mile run on the weekend. The remaining 4 days you can split into doubles. 6 + 4, 7 + 3, 5 + 5 whichever suits you best.

Personally I find this is pretty much optimum training for most runners. Don’t rush it but use it as an aim for now. Slowly adding each bit. And then once you’re there comfortably you can look to add a bit more volume again. Especially if you think the half marathon/marathon is something you’d like to do in the not too distant future.

+1

Brilliant advice. Simple easy to follow steps to improvement. Letsrun has been lacking good training discussions. Granted it's all be discussed before but good to see new runners getting the right advice at the moment. well done.

Thanks very much @Do both! - will give this a go.

Good thread - I'll add two thoughts. One is that not every specific session has to be hard. I think there's a useful role for 'medium' days, like a very controlled 20-30 minute tempo 15-20 sec. per mile slower than HM pace, or on the other end of the spectrum, something like 8-12x200m with 400 jog.

Second, I really like an occasional moderate volume, moderate intensity session, e.g. a 10 mile progression run working down to HM pace for the last 1-2 miles, or 3-4x5 minutes at HM pace in the back half of a 10-12 mile run. I wouldn't advocate doing one of these + a traditional workout + a true long run all in one week, but as others have said a 9-10 day cycle can work well, or if weekend long runs work better, something like:

Week 1

-Specific session, like the 6x3 mins or 3x8 mins

-A 'medium' day

-A traditional long run - I'd do 12-14 miles if you're only doing it every other week, maybe building to 15-16 for HM

Week 2

-Specific session

-Moderate volume, moderate intensity day

-Easy long-ish run (9-10 miles)

This gives you two pretty hard days + one medium day per week. Then fill in the rest with the volume you're able to. Really easy days when you need them, steady mileage when you're feeling ok, ideally some doubles. As long as you don't race the workouts, you can build pretty good volume around this type of setup, and like others have said, get both good volume and good specificity.

Just my personal opinion but from experience I can tell you that the 'long run' isn't necessary if you're training for a 5k. If you want to cover a longer distance, it's better to do a longer tempo run or something like 10*1 mile reps.

Additionally, the absence of 'shorter' reps is probably hurting OP. Even Marathon runner do 400m reps at times, I'd recommend doing the occasional 'shorter' session, e.g. 600s or 400s.

10 x 1 mile seems a lot!!

But the longer tempo you’re right about. I think don’t complicate it. Run a variety of reps between 200m and 1 mile and one tempo run up to about 8 miles max I’d say. Start of at 4 miles. You could do ‘tempo reps’ too. 3 x 2 miles etc. and if you’re doing that, do shorter reps on the other day.

As someone mentioned above, there’s a number of ways to skin a cat. Find what works for you and it sounds like you have. So just get that tempo run in and keep at it. You should break 17 off that kind of training and you won’t be a million miles away from breaking 16 with a bit more volume on top over time.