5k training with NO LONG RUN? Am I shortchanging myself?

Why would you do a long run for 5k training? The way you're doing it is the way I would expect one to train for a 5k on 80 miles per week.

Even if you were training for a half marathon, a long run wouldn't be necessary for you, certainly not for 5k.

10 is sufficient

Looks malmo approved to me, except for 14(?) sessions a week. That might be a little excessive. I say take Saturday p.m. off and live a little...chase some girls.

Those are 3-4 mile runs seem pointless. Just scrap them, do a 12 mile long run on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and increase all your runs to the 8-12 mile range and you'll be golden. If you think its too little training, then run faster.

NotAustin18 wrote:

Those are 3-4 mile runs seem pointless. Just scrap them, do a 12 mile long run on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and increase all your runs to the 8-12 mile range and you'll be golden. If you think its too little training, then run faster.

DONT LISTEN TO THIS horrible advice.

I think 10 miles is plenty long for a 5k training plan.

NotAustin18 wrote:

Those are 3-4 mile runs seem pointless. Just scrap them, do a 12 mile long run on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and increase all your runs to the 8-12 mile range and you'll be golden. If you think its too little training, then run faster.

^ I did this and dropped from 32:20 to 29:35 in the 10k.

But I am sure the 3-4 years of doubles before the switch was a key contributor.

The training, it's all connected. One thing builds on another. Along with maturing physically and adapting to the years of doubles it was the added sleep that also was a big contributor. Do the doubles but not at the expense of your sleep.

And I agree about chasing some girls on Saturday night. Live life while your young.

The Animal Within wrote:

NotAustin18 wrote:

Those are 3-4 mile runs seem pointless. Just scrap them, do a 12 mile long run on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and increase all your runs to the 8-12 mile range and you'll be golden. If you think its too little training, then run faster.

^ I did this and dropped from 32:20 to 29:35 in the 10k.

But I am sure the 3-4 years of doubles before the switch was a key contributor.

The training, it's all connected. One thing builds on another. Along with maturing physically and adapting to the years of doubles it was the added sleep that also was a big contributor. Do the doubles but not at the expense of your sleep.

And I agree about chasing some girls on Saturday night. Live life while your young.

Wow man that's a huge drop! Congrats.

I've doubled my fair share of times, but it has never lead to good results. I find it better for my endurance to just do one good length run(8-12 miles) at a good pace and get extra recovery. For me everything needs to be quality or its not worth doing, quality as in a little quicker on my runs than if I were doubling. When I double its 730 pace, when I single its 7-710 pace.

NotAustin18 wrote:When I double its 730 pace, when I single its 7-710 pace.

You're doing it wrong. The whole point of doubling is to be able to go harder than if you did the total mileage as a single.

NotAustin18 wrote:When I double its 730 pace, when I single its 7-710 pace.

Definitive proof that you have little idea of what you're doing. Stop offering training advice and also stop offering opinions on other non-running issues. Just listen and try to learn.

Everything you do should have a reason. Doubling is fine, so long as you aren't doubling for the sake of doubling. It has its time and place, but shouldn't be a main focus of your running.

So why are you doubling so much? Do you get fatigued from 80 mpw in singles? Is it a time issue?

I've dropped from 16:00 to 14:45 over the last 10 years, and I've done mileage both ways: Only singles and lots of doubles. In my opinion, the sweet spot is somewhere in between. As a general rule, you should have one run a day of 60 minutes, and your doubles shouldn't be less than 30 minutes. Doubles are great the day after workouts, it will help you recover faster. Or the day before, to allow for more mileage without fatiguing your legs. But otherwise you don't need it.

A run of 12-15 miles is good in the base phase, but once you begin serious workouts, more than 12 miles is unnecessary.

My base phase this last year went something like this:

Mon: 8 mi

Tue: 12 mi including short hill repeats

Wed: 10 mi

Thu: 12 mi

Fri: 12 mi including some kind of tempo work later in the phase

Sat: 10 mi

Sun: 16 mi

Total: 80 mi. No doubles, but they could have been added Tue/Thu if I'd needed

Later, when I got into workouts:

Mon: 13 mi, track session

Tue: AM 4 mi; PM 6 mi

Wed: 13 mi, track session

Thu: AM 4 mi; PM 8 mi

Fri: AM 4 mi; PM 6 mi

Sat: 12 mi, track session

Sun: 10 easy

Total: 80 mi. 3 days of doubles, 2 of which broke the 60 min run rule, but the focus here was on the track sessions.

Doo wrote:

NotAustin18 wrote:When I double its 730 pace, when I single its 7-710 pace.

You're doing it wrong. The whole point of doubling is to be able to go harder than if you did the total mileage as a single.

Wrong. The whole point of doubling is to stress your body twice as much as running in singles, therefore your body adapts to the frequency change and begins to recover quicker

Well for one, I find that running doubles reduces my injury risk. I am being cautious this summer since I do not want to get injured, I can't afford that (but who could!?). I find doubling also even more fun as I get to do what I enjoy doing moat twice in one day, versus just once. And I've been reading SOM, etc and doubles seems to be the way to go instead of running 10-14 miles everyday in singles and possibly getting injured (as of now, I used to only run 30mpw give or take. I find being able to double helps me at the least double my mileage without injury and doubles have benefits that singles dont have.

5k isnt that long so I'd think I wouldn't need to run more than 10 miles a day in singles but what would be better would be two shorter runs of up to 8 miles

You can definitely run a fast 5k off no long runs. I had a minor injury, the longer i ran the more i noticed it so the longest i ran was 8 miles, still ran 1415

damn bro, what were you're training paces? how many miles were you running per week. thats great

There's no consensus on the purpose/effect of doubles. Undoubtedly doubles make it easier to get in the same number of miles, but it's not clear that it's better to do slightly more miles on doubles vs. less on singles.

Anecdotally, it's the 5k guys that seem to appreciate doubles more than the marathoners. Not that the marathoners don't do them, but that's because most marathoners are trying to push their mileage as high as possible.

5k guys doing doubles can accumulate a lot of miles at a really decent clip without subjecting themselves to the muscle damage that comes from stretching the length of fast runs. For a half marathoner or marathoner, developing mechanical fatigue resistance is key, so they have to be sure that they're getting in a good number of runs over 45 minutes.

My personal belief is that regularly doing doubles teaches your body to adapt to training stimuli much more quickly. If the body knows it only has 12 hours to get ready to roll, then adaptations should be in overdrive. I don't believe in recovery runs in the sense of a run that actually makes you recover sooner. I think it's the regular practice of doing recovery runs that makes you recover sooner. The reason I think this is true is that on the rare occasion that my legs were totally trashed after a workout and I decided to skip my "recovery" run the next day, I found that I bounced back exceptionally well, but only if I had been doing recovery runs pretty regularly before taking a morning off.

Have you raced in the last six months?

Ask lydiard about doubling, or those worthless 3 to 4 mile runs.

Nice program in terms of miles and training sessions. Intensity may be lacking. Consider the 5K cross country race is short and quick. Likely will have to run a very fast first 800m to get off the line and in a good position. This leaves 2 miles +/- to race before having to kick in the last 800m. It's a fast race and a summer base that includes some quick continuous hill loops, and some quick 800m intervals over rolling terrain will benefit you. Speaking from experience I would get too far away from race tempo and speed workouts during base training periods. Hopefully you can avoid these mistakes.