How Important is Speedwork to break 10k 30min?

HRE wrote: But yes, he was doing speed work throughout his college career if you count frequent races speed work.

I don't consider them to be speedwork and that's the point. This is a runner with sub 30 probably sub 29 potential based on these times (8:45, 2:14). He did mileage but no speedwork and didn't get near that potential. Textbook case.

It depends.

If you can run sub 2:50min 1k without feeling like you're even pushing on the legs, then you don't need much speed work.

If you can do it, but you feel like you "push" on the legs, then you probably need to some speed work.

Lot's of 9 minute mile jogging. That's what you need.

Don't you listen to the letsrun experts or not? Don't do your mileage at any pace that gets your heart rate over 100. Slow slow slow. 100 miles of it.

Maybe you're right. I don't know how many 6/10,000 races he ran nor how seriously he took them but if he got a two mile time that converts to at least 29:14 I think he was doing enough fast stuff that he was capable of sub 30:00 if he'd really had it as a goal or run the distance often enough under good conditions.

Probably either lots of speed work or lots of mileage would get you there, provided you have the talent. I think it’s easier with the latter, as the body gets fitter and fitter with lots of volume, and the average training pace keeps dropping. I wouldn’t necessarily count unplanned progression or tempo runs as speed work, but I would think them necessary to get under 30. I just don’t think any track workouts or fartleks are necessary.

Regarding Nenow, he had the rare, dual talents of being a natural anyway and being able to sustain a lot of volume. Many of his runs were probably done at 30:00 10k pace. I think his approach to running was almost ideal. I always thought that two hours of running per day in two runs, with a two hour long run was the optimal amount of running to reach one’s potential. But, even if he would’ve benefited from formal track work, I don’t think that kind of volume allows for much of it anyway, for most mere mortals anyhow.

consider this wrote:

HRE wrote: But yes, he was doing speed work throughout his college career if you count frequent races speed work.

I don't consider them to be speedwork and that's the point. This is a runner with sub 30 probably sub 29 potential based on these times (8:45, 2:14). He did mileage but no speedwork and didn't get near that potential. Textbook case.

Amby was a marathoner and not interested in getting near his potential at 6 miles or 10000m. He is similar to the many fast Japanese marathoners of today who have relatively slow 5000 and 10000 times compared to their marathon times. They are simply not interested in peaking for short races which are just part of their marathon training.

Another giver of +1 wrote:

consider this wrote:

I don't consider them to be speedwork and that's the point. This is a runner with sub 30 probably sub 29 potential based on these times (8:45, 2:14). He did mileage but no speedwork and didn't get near that potential. Textbook case.

Amby was a marathoner and not interested in getting near his potential at 6 miles or 10000m. He is similar to the many fast Japanese marathoners of today who have relatively slow 5000 and 10000 times compared to their marathon times. They are simply not interested in peaking for short races which are just part of their marathon training.

Those Japanese elites who are marathoners are not that slow because their average times for 5000 and 10,000 m are 1335 and 2810 to 2820. Not slow.

The point I've been trying to make is what you're saying but on a larger scale. You can't always look at a list of someone's best times and assume each is the best they could do for that distance had they really focused on that distance. Snell's best marathon was 2:41. I believe it was the only one he ran and it was really done as training. It's reasonable to think he'd have gone significantly faster if he'd ever gotten serious about the distance even if he never got to world class.

For a College Division runner before 1970 there usually were not very many opportunities to race at 6/10,000 and even fewer where you'd have elite competition. You could find it if you and your coach wanted it but not everyone did.

Ghost1 wrote:

Another giver of +1 wrote:

Amby was a marathoner and not interested in getting near his potential at 6 miles or 10000m. He is similar to the many fast Japanese marathoners of today who have relatively slow 5000 and 10000 times compared to their marathon times. They are simply not interested in peaking for short races which are just part of their marathon training.

Those Japanese elites who are marathoners are not that slow because their average times for 5000 and 10,000 m are 1335 and 2810 to 2820. Not slow.

No, not slow but arguably the marathon times of many Japanese elite men and women are of higher quality than their 5k/10k times and they have more opportunities to race track 5k/10k than Amby did.

Internetsherlock wrote:

hmm.... am so confused because i have very less knowledge on how endurance speed training works .... just few hours back i did an all out 400m on a straight road and did around 62/63 sec... but i suppose an all out 400m doesn't reflect anything much towards distance running performance huh...? i have yet to experiment with 400m repeats and such ..

I'm sorry what? 62 second all-out 400 is like barely sub-40 10K , not sub-30, in terms of performance. Of course 400 is a sprint event not a distance event so there's no equivalence chart that would've been even remotely accurate, but I highly doubt that you'll be able to run several reps of 65-70 s 400s if your all-out effort is 62

HRE wrote:

The point I've been trying to make is what you're saying but on a larger scale. You can't always look at a list of someone's best times and assume each is the best they could do for that distance had they really focused on that distance. Snell's best marathon was 2:41. I believe it was the only one he ran and it was really done as training. It's reasonable to think he'd have gone significantly faster if he'd ever gotten serious about the distance even if he never got to world class.

For a College Division runner before 1970 there usually were not very many opportunities to race at 6/10,000 and even fewer where you'd have elite competition. You could find it if you and your coach wanted it but not everyone did.

At some point you have to own your results and quit saying you coulda shoulda done better. Burfoot raced roughly every week for 20 years and was still in his prime during the running boom, so the oppotunities were there. He ran as fast as his training allowed.

HRE wrote:

The point I've been trying to make is what you're saying but on a larger scale. You can't always look at a list of someone's best times and assume each is the best they could do for that distance had they really focused on that distance. Snell's best marathon was 2:41. I believe it was the only one he ran and it was really done as training. It's reasonable to think he'd have gone significantly faster if he'd ever gotten serious about the distance even if he never got to world class.

For a College Division runner before 1970 there usually were not very many opportunities to race at 6/10,000 and even fewer where you'd have elite competition. You could find it if you and your coach wanted it but not everyone did.

This is still true for the 10k. There just aren't a lot of opportunities to run them competitively. In college, you get 1 or 2 a season. After college, most guys with the legs for 10k end up focusing on the marathon, and they're only going to run a fast 10k if it's late in their marathon training. For what it's worth, I've split faster than my official 10k PR twice within a marathon, once in a 10-miler, and once in a half marathon.

Jon Arne Glomsrud wrote:Today there is practical evidence and theoretic reasons why a lot of training should be close to or at the AT to lower it as much as possible.

Incorrect.

In running boom era of the 1970s 10K was the most common road racing distance.

consider this from a different device wrote:

At some point you have to own your results and quit saying you coulda shoulda done better. Burfoot raced roughly every week for 20 years and was still in his prime during the running boom, so the oppotunities were there. He ran as fast as his training allowed.

Burfoot won Boston as a college senior, graduated, went to Alamosa and did not make the Olympic team, got a job as an elementary school teacher, ended 1968 with the almost US record at Fukuoka, and then more or less vanished until 1975 as far as the marathon went. He was running from '68 to '75 but wrote in Joe's book that he didn't have the time to train as he'd done because of his job. In a conversation he and I had riding to the start of the National 30 km Championship in either 1975 or '76 he told me that another reason he had not run well for all those years was that he was not racing nearly as often at shorter distances, 800 to 5 km, as he'd done in college and finally figured out that those short races were a form of speed work.

He began racing well again at the marathon in 1975 and '76, got 9th or 10th at the '76 Trials Marathon and then pretty much disappeared from the marathon. He wrote somewhere that he'd just gotten tired of running 100 mile weeks and was running maybe half that much but much harder than he used to do. He continued running well in shorter road races, he won the Manchester Thanksgiving Race every year but one (1970) from 1968 to '77. So yes, he continued to race all those years but evidently not as often as he'd done in college.

That still does not alter the fact that in those days there simply were very, very, few opportunities to race at 6 miles/10,000 meters if you were an out of college runner. The distance was beginning to be run on the roads by the mid '70s but it was not common until late in the decade. If you were good enough to get into something like the Colonial Relays, Penn Relays, etc., you could race the distance. When I graduated in 1974 the only place I could have raced 6/10,000 aside from very rare cross country meets was at my regional AAU outdoor championship meet. By, say, 1978 there were 10 km road races all over the place but that was after Burfoot's prime.

Yes, ultimately you ran what you ran. I did not mention Burfoot when I gave examples of guys who'd run under 30:00 for 10 km without speed work because he had not. But when someone else mentioned him I thought it worth pointing out that as was probably the case with Bill Rodgers, there could well have been a better time had he really gone after it. Is it really so hard to understand that your best time at a given distance might have been better if you'd raced it more often?

Thanks HRE, interesting reading. Another runner who broke 30 for 10k without speedwork (besides races) was Derek Clayton. I think he was around 27:50. Ran very fast in training, similar to Nenow, and very high mileage. To argue the alternative viewpoint, I'd say it's very difficult to break 30 for 10k off just steady running and no regular racing or running near race pace, unless you have the talent/natural speed to run 28:00 with perfect training.

Where have all the Mark Nenow types gone..? We need more people who embody this beast like training and fun attitude.