VO2 max for 10k?

confused- wrote:

Hi, just a quick question. Is doing work at 5k or faster pace (800s, 1000s, 1200s etc) beneficial to do ever week or so while training for the 10k?

I know threshold/tempo and long runs are of importance, but how often should someone do work at VO2 max pace?

Yes.

Neither tempo nor long runs are important for 10k.

interesting malmo..

I figured you'd feel that way about the long run but curious about your thoughts on the threshold work.

Interestingly enough I'm helping a runner come up with workout plans for a 10k and the first thing that went were the long runs and then a lot of the tempo work...not by design it just ended up being necessary in order to get in a lot of quality work around 10k goal/5k pace. Maintained mileage but just split it into more easy doubles and just made sure they were ready to go for the 10k pace work. Was a bit worried about the limited tempo work but maybe I shouldn't be?

They were coming off a Half Marathon cycle 3 months ago so I was hoping a lot of the threshold work would carry over. The 5 on/ 5 off and 10 on/ 10 off workouts I saw you suggest on a different thread awhile ago seemed to be very effective for the half by the way.

VO2max sessions should be done twice weekly.

malmo wrote:

Yes.

Neither tempo nor long runs are important for 10k.

No. Tempo runs and long runs are the most important 10k workouts. Long repeats at 5k or faster should be, at best, your fourth or fifth priority and shouldn't be done more than once every two weeks.

some other guy wrote:

No. Tempo runs and long runs are the most important 10k workouts. Long repeats at 5k or faster should be, at best, your fourth or fifth priority and shouldn't be done more than once every two weeks.

Good luck selling your looney ideas.

Why are tempo runs not important for racing 10k?

malmo wrote:

Good luck selling your looney ideas.

'cause it's not like those ideas resulted in success for any of us...

drano wrote:

Why are tempo runs not important for racing 10k?

Because malmo is a crotchety old man who wishes things were like "the good old days" when nobody knew about the anaerobic or aerobic threshold and everybody from 800 runners to marathoners did mile repeats every Monday and hard 400s every Wednesday.

Meanwhile in the 21st century, the runners who are actually racing, PRing, and smashing the old records from the '70s are doing long runs, threshold workouts, and tempo runs as their bread-and-butter.

Jack D, Arthur L, Greg M, etc wrote:

'cause it's not like those ideas resulted in success for any of us...

I can't wait for you to show us where any of those guys said that long runs and tempos are the most important things for 10k training.

asdfasdf wrote:

Because malmo is a crotchety old man who wishes things were like "the good old days" when nobody knew about the anaerobic or aerobic threshold and everybody from 800 runners to marathoners did mile repeats every Monday and hard 400s every Wednesday.

Meanwhile in the 21st century, the runners who are actually racing, PRing, and smashing the old records from the '70s are doing long runs, threshold workouts, and tempo runs as their bread-and-butter.

Aren't tempo runs and threshold workouts the same thing?

asdfasdf wrote:

drano wrote:

Why are tempo runs not important for racing 10k?

Because malmo is a crotchety old man who wishes things were like "the good old days" when nobody knew about the anaerobic or aerobic threshold and everybody from 800 runners to marathoners did mile repeats every Monday and hard 400s every Wednesday.

Meanwhile in the 21st century, the runners who are actually racing, PRing, and smashing the old records from the '70s are doing long runs, threshold workouts, and tempo runs as their bread-and-butter.

This.

From my experience tempo runs are one of the most important things. Its interesting because at my school the coach keeps the training relatively similar from indoor to outdoor and the 10k guys end up tanking HARD. Same training from 3k steeple to 10k with the main workouts being 800s, 1200s, and 1600s. He completely throws away the tempo and it shows in race performance even though he thinks its all a mental game.

If you do nothing but interval work on the track you will just become fatigued.

asdfasdf wrote:

Because malmo is a crotchety old man who wishes things were like "the good old days" when nobody knew about the anaerobic or aerobic threshold and everybody from 800 runners to marathoners did mile repeats every Monday and hard 400s every Wednesday.

Sorry to enlighten you, pal, nothing new about distance training has been discovered since the "good old days".

Tempo runs and long runs rate far down on the level of importance for 10k training. So low that you could completely do without them if you wanted to. Most importance would be repeats (800-2000m) at race pace.

I'm agreeing with Malmo here. Endurance training isn't a high priority for the 10k. So true long runs are not required and have the negative effect of the muscle breakdown. And tempo runs are often done too hard, negating their advantage of gently working the anaerobic system. Mile repeats work the anaerobic system more effectively and the rest breaks between reps allow for more training and "running while strong". If tempo runs are done too fast, there is a lot of "running while weak" because of the acidity-induced muscle weakness.

ieihghksk wrote:

I'm agreeing with Malmo here. Endurance training isn't a high priority for the 10k. So true long runs are not required and have the negative effect of the muscle breakdown. And tempo runs are often done too hard, negating their advantage of gently working the anaerobic system. Mile repeats work the anaerobic system more effectively and the rest breaks between reps allow for more training and "running while strong". If tempo runs are done too fast, there is a lot of "running while weak" because of the acidity-induced muscle weakness.

You might be agreeing with me, but I'm not quite in agreement with you.

Endurance training IS a high priority for the 10k. The problem here is that people are fooling themselves to believe that long runs and tempos runs are the most important, or even highly important for developing endurance. Most important 10k training would be consistent and frequent (read doubles) training stresses of any kind. Preferably, those include regular sessions at or near race pace. Anything else is gravy. Tempo runs and long runs are ancillary pieces to the puzzle -- they are not the necessary pieces.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by endurance. To me, endurance is about fatigue and energy depletion. Many throw stamina, strength, basic conditioning, and all sorts of other issues and terms into endurance. I prefer to place them into their own categories where I think they belong.

Fatigue and energy depletion are not important factors in the 10k for trained participants.

Absolutely ridiculous. So basically you're saying that you can just do easy runs with two track sessions per week? I hope you are doing a ton of 800s to prepare you for the 10k because from personal experience I can run repeats all day but honestly struggle on tempo runs.

tempo runs tempo runs tempo runs are probably the foundation of the 10,000.

next, would be v02 max workouts which allow you to run the tempo runs in the first place.

practice makes perfect.

Define the length of long runs. I'm probably guessing wrong here, but Malmo probably thinks of long runs as 14-20 miles. Runs that long are not going to be that useful for 10k training and will probably take away from your ability to run 10k race pace in other workouts throughout the week. I would think regular runs of 7-10 miles would be very useful, especially if some of it is performed at 10k race pace.

Also, Malmo's definition of tempo pace predates a lot of Jack Daniels and other popular and more recent definitions of tempo pace. I believe I have read that Malmo states tempo pace is marathon pace or just slightly faster. Daniels, I believe, says tempo pace is the pace you can maintain for 15k to half marathon.

You just want to disagree with Malmo. Regular is not exactly equivalent to 2x per week and 2000m reps are way different than 800s. Have you actually tried racing 10k when you are struggling on tempo runs? You may not be as bad off as you suspect.

One year I tried basing my training around mile repeats and the next year I based my training on hard 10 mile runs. I ran the same time on the same course once weather (15sec) was taken into account. The difference was with the mile repeats the race hurt like crazy but I wanted to hurt and had trained for it. With the 10 mile runs the race was really easy but I just couldn't get going.