10k under 35 minutes

assuming one has the genetic potential in the first place.

Exactly.

I am a founder member of a running club we started in England in 1984.

Having been involved in the North East of England Club scene for all this time and i can tell you that a very small % of club runners reach 31 min 10 k level.

Dont get me wrong obviously some do but relative to the size of club this is still low.

The guy was quouting progression from 37 ish to 31 as if you only had to follow the sessions and bingo you would hit 31 mins.

This is way of the mark,you are right when you say IF YOU HAVE THE GENETIC POTENTIAL no one and i mean no one will hit 31 on hard work alone.

Genetics are everything ,you can reach 31 on talent and little work but you will not hit it with hard work and no talent .

I know i am that man.

huh?,

The long run was not hard. Maybe call it a "medium" workout. The tempo/steady state thing was not hard either. Call it medium. I could have run that several days a week.

The 400s on the track were maybe a little difficult. Only a little. I would not have done longer reps the day after a tempo effort and long run but most guys can do 400s in their sleep with equal time rest. Note I was doing only about 3,200m-4,000m of this stuff at 3000m race pace.

The 1km reps were hard. They were accurately measured on a certified 10km course. Today I like 1km reps, think they're the perfect distance to train at for MaxVO2 improvement.

I averaged 100km a week from May-September. Easiest week was 80km, longest was 120km which included a 20miler at 7:00 pace (last 3km in 10:30ish run in late Aug).

If I had my time back I would still train this way. If I had to make a change it would be to switch the Tuesday track workout to Wednesday and run 1,000s or 1,200s instead of 400s and then skip the road reps. But I did fine with two speedier workouts a week. Did not get injured that season.

And yes there is a benefit to training hard-hard-easy. I think it's the callousing effect of training that second day hard over weeks and weeks.

Ditto on the easy a.m. runs. Mine were 6km, run in about 28-30min with my coach, a former 2:18/high 29min guy who swore on doubles being the best training scheme ever developed. The toughest thing do was to hold back and run easy as I was ripping to run hard all the time. One day coach missed the workout at 6:30am and I sped though the 6ks in under 22min. He gave me hell for that.

Personally I think you can do almost any kind of running and improve as long as you are training hard. Maybe the single most important thing is to be consistent: week over week over week just keep running a little more or a little faster and don't get injured. I also think if you take an off day per week you can train hard all the time and avoid taking easy weeks to recover.

The overriding theme of most of the 10k threads seems to be stacks and stacks of miles.

RonnyH wrote:

The overriding theme of most of the 10k threads seems to be stacks and stacks of miles.

That's because "miles make champions"

Is that Lydiard you're quoting?

simple is best wrote:

M 60mins

T 4x5mins 2mins recvery

W 60mins

T 5x3mins 90sec recovery

F rest

S 60mins OR 15x1min 1min recovery.

S 75mins

That's the schedule from Steve Jones.

My feeling on this is the recoveries need to be very easy. The harder the runs, the easier the recoveries. Probably just walking around between them is fine. And using the runs to translate to picking up your race pace, running them relatively fast, but not as fast as possible where there would be no carry through over distance. Race pace is better than running them too fast.

RonnyH wrote:

Is that Lydiard you're quoting?

who else?

Hmmmmmmmm....

I think i can run under 35 minutes with my current milage of 5-6 mpw but ofcourse I will try to get much better time than that so i have to run more every week and rise the milage little bit every week now so i finally reach 8-10 mpw sometime but i have to be carefully of not being injured because the most importent if i shall get to my goal is to run consistent every week and not get hurt!

So what are you guys think of running technique training and strenghtraining? what kind of workout shoul I do ??

//Thomas

Maybe I missed it earlier in the thread, but can someone give an idea on what type of pace should be applied to the hard days on this schedule? My assumption is that the 4 x 5 min would be tempo-ish, the middle day around 5k pace, and the 15 x 1 min around 1500/3k pace. Any help would be appreciated.

M 60mins

T 4x5mins 2mins recvery

W 60mins

T 5x3mins 90sec recovery

F rest

S 60mins OR 15x1min 1min recovery.

S 75mins

This is the schedule to which I was referrig- didn't attach the first time.

referring

That's what I was thinking -- though I don't know anything about the original poster of this schedule or Steve Jones.

I do a very similar schedule to this, and that first workout is definitely a tempo day for me. The main difference that I do is I alternate Thursday as 3 minute repeats and the 1min/1mins, and always do an easy hour run on Saturday (except when racing). I also do 90 minutes on Sunday instead of 75.

Good, low complexity training schedule for this old road racer who has no higher aspirations than winning age group in a turkey trot. Works year round and can race any road race (sans marathon) fairly decently on a lark.

As a middle-of-the-pack high school runner in the 80's, I found a magazine (The Runner?) that had an article written about Steve Jones' 1984 Chicago marathon. I recall the article talking about his training which consisted of 4X5 minutes, 8X3 minutes, etc.

I opted out of cross country that fall and decided to run road races on my own. My mileage went from about 35 miles per week to 60-70 during the preceding summer, and included twice-weekly road interval sessions like the ones above. I ran about an hour on the other days, however I felt. I knocked 1.5 minutes off my 5K PR in my very first road race and ran a 34-something 10K as well. Good times!

It's looking like a 60mpw average over several months (and in some cases the appropriate tempo/interval sessions) is the standard recipe for getting under 35.

This is fascinating for me, because I'm hovering just inside of 41 minutes for 10k... but I've yet to get past a average of 45mpw. I'll be interested to see what I'm doing on 60+

I was for several year a very average "joe runner"...

not really talented and picked-up running only in adult age.

Running for several years 10k in 36-37'.

I went down to 33' in 1 year, why?

- running religiously every day (maybe only 7/8km easy, but avoid missing days)

- running more: from 50/60km, I moved to 100/120km weekly

- 3 workouts weekly

1st: strides and faster workout to improve my leg turnover: the workout was not very demamdning in itself (not a VO2max workout, but more like fast intervals at brisk pace, without reaching fatigues state)

2nd: a solid tempo run/long intervals workout (reaching 10/15km of HM paced effort)

3rd: a long run, but with some variations and/or faster final

+ easy days, using HR monitor to keep HR under 70/75%HRmax

most of all, follow the well-known advice: do not borrow the workout from tomorrow's one... do not end up dead at the end of the workouts, must be a fatigue that you can recover in 24/48 hrs.

I did my 10k and 5k PB while training for a marathon...

avoid too many interval training workouts: 4 o 5 weeks with 1 specific Interval training workouts are more than enough to reach a peak. Doing VO2max intervals all year long will only make you tired.

Former 33 min guy wrote:

Personally I think you can do almost any kind of running and improve as long as you are training hard. Maybe the single most important thing is to be consistent: week over week over week just keep running a little more or a little faster and don't get injured.

Totally agree. Read this and remember it. Little else training wise makes that much difference.

There is no standard recipe. Running under 35 minutes takes a bit of talent and the right training. Some people can run sub 35 on 20 miles a week. Others could run 100mpw and will never get there.

I'm in the same boat as the OP, looking to run 34:xx this year hopefully. I have a 38:20 PR but I've never trained for a 10k and I've only run 3. I've split 36 high/37 low en route in a half marathon since running the 38:20 so I know that I can take a few minutes at least off that PR.

I'm building my mileage up right now after an easy past couple months and I'm going to take a few of the workout ideas in this thread and start applying them. I'm hoping to run a couple road 10k's in April and May.