The feeling of a sub 31 10k

If you could run 31:00 (5:00 pace) for 10k, then 5:30 would feel like marathon pace. And 6:00 would feel like a decent pace for a normal steady run, but would maybe be a shade too hard for everyday pace. So maybe even 6:20-6:30 the day after a demanding track workout.

I would imagine that when malmo ran a 61:43 HM (4:42 pace), then 5:00 felt like marathon pace / effort. I'm sure 5:00 never felt "easy", to specifically answer your question.

To use that info in your case, if you can run 34:00 for 10k (5:30 pace), then 6:00 should feel like marathon pace. If you are not well-trained (and you don't sound like you are) then maybe even 6:10 would feel more like marathon pace.

Easy pace for you (ie: most of your daily running pace) might be 6:40-7:00 depending on your training from the day before.

I find the problem is rarely psychological; it's more likely that you just train too hard to race 10k and up. If your training is too intense, then you can appear to be doing well at 3-5k, but then not be able to manage the 10k time that those shorter performances predict. If that sounds like you: then your problem is simple; you are either a) training too intensely too often or b) not running enough miles or c) both.

I know nothing of malmo's training, but offer these ballpark figures so you can get a feel for what paces should feel like in your case. Having said that, I would not expect to be too far wrong in the training paces I offer.

It feels slow, everyone on letsrun runs 29 flat or below

Torgo wrote:

Wasn't sure how to ask this, but what I'm wondering is this: If one is in shape to run 6 5 minute miles in a row, how does it feel running 6 minute miles in training? Are there days even when you're rested that 6 minute miles feel tough? And how does 5 minute pace feel on training runs, like if you tried to run a 2 mile training run in 10 minutes? Is it too much? I mean, did Malmo find 5 minute pace to be easy when he was capable of a 61:43 half? It just boggles my mind, I can't seem to break 34 for 10k, and I'm beginning to think it's physcological.

When I was in HS, most of my runs were 6:30-6:45 pace with the occasional one at 6:00 pace and I was not doing over 35mpw. At the time I could run 4:20 for the mile. Hard workouts and races were like some kind of magic where at the end of them I didn't know how I was capable of generating the times I ran.

In college my training pace found its way down under 6:00 pace and anything slower than that seemed like a total waste of time. 6:00 pace felt easy but 5:50 pace was a bit stiff and 5:40 pace was tough. But in reality 6:00 pace was not easy at all, it just felt "normal" to me. The consequences of this were: I felt like ass in any hard workouts, I felt like ass in most of my races, the magic effect of suddenly being able to race at paces unapproached in practice disappeared, and I started to get the mentality that if I couldn't do it in practice I couldn't do it in a race.

My recommendation is to read Jack Daniels' book to find the appropriate paces for your training, and then do as much training as you can at those paces, erring on the conservative side. If you improve, you will quickly be able to revise the pace you are training (and racing) at.

If you do what I did in college, you will end up burned out and sick most of the time and you will never run PRs. I eventually could run 5:45 pace for up to an hour at altitude (4000ft) in practice but only ever ran 5:40 pace for a half-marathon race at sea level. I am now (10 years later) attempting to reset that PR with the appropriate type of training.

I can give you a second-hand answer from a friend of mine who was a 2:15 guy. I recall one workout I did with him a week or two prior to one of his PRs (I think he ran 2:18). He was supposed to do a 3 mile warmup, 2 miles at marathon goal pace, 3 miles, then another 2 miles at marathon goal pace. The point of the workout was just for him to get the goal pace patterned in his head one last time. He was suffering bad during the 2 mile segments and wondering how the hell he was going to manage that pace for 26M. A couple weeks later he nailed the pace for the whole marathon.

Point of the story: don't worry about how the pace feels in practice. Run the pace that is appropriate for your training and enjoy the "magic" effect that races have where you can suddenly run a minute a mile faster and have it feel easy.

Forgot to mention that I only ran 32:59 for 10k and never PRed again at the mile after HS. The training I did in college, probably a minute per mile faster than high school, did not improve me at all.

I advocate doing as much volume as possible, but only at the right pace. If you are going too fast, you'll end up like I did. Had I simply increased my mileage without also jacking the pace up there, I'm sure I would have seen a better PR than 32:59. I was practically incapable of performing a decent interval workout for years due to all the lactic acid I was building up in my system during training runs that should have been a minute per mile slower...