Running

if you can’t run for 7 minutes at your threshold pace then it’s not your threshold pace. As I said before it’s the best pace you could manage for an hour, or in simple terms threshold is between your 10k pace and half marathon pace. As a rough guess your threshold is just over 5 min kms, so looking on Strava, at between 4:20 and 4:40 you were trying to go too fast.

What youve described is a vo2 max interval and a 5 min interval of this is a beneficial workout, but isn’t what was in your plan so don’t beat yourself up but go a bit easier next time!

Anyone got the Salomon Speedcross 4 Shoes?

Yup, off @Stonehedge through here. They're v.good, my only small gripe is the laces gradually work loose. 9/10

So after what feels like about 18 months / 2 years of aiming for about 45/50 miles a week and not really getting any faster I'm having a slight change. Inspired by this article I'm going to see what lower mileage but all slightly faster does for me. The target for the summer is a sub 16 5k at Orion Fast Friday and a sub 34 10k at Ladywell 1000. We'll see how this all goes.

Saturday: Hill session such as 15 x 90s up/down, or 10min, 10min, 5min tempo

What does this mean?

They ok on road or just for cross country?
I’ve been waiting to get the Nike Epic Reacts for longer road runs but they’re sold out everywhere, these might be a good stop gap

15x90s will be 15 lots of a hill that takes about 90seconds to run up, I assume. Happy to be corrected.

10 min, 10 min, 5 min will be the time for each effort. So, 10minutes at tempo, then a 3 minute recovery, another 10, another 3 minutes recovery, then 5 at tempo: a pretty challenging session.

a pretty challenging session.

Tuesday: Road session such as 10 min, 10 min, 5 min (off 3 mins at 5k pace)

Fuck. That.

Ah thanks very much - I might give that a go at the weekend.

They're ok on hard surfaces as I wear them most days 'cos they don't make my plantar fascithingy any worse. I've run about 130 mile in them on mixed terrain and some of that has been hard canal paths etc which they're fine for, but as an offroad shoe they're much better suited to mud n stuff.

Looking at the Nike you're after the Salomon Sonic may be closer match(?), although if you got the Speedcross as a stopgap you'd have them as offroad shoe option once you get the Nikes.

It will hurt.

Good luck, I'm very interested to see how that goes for you. You've got some good natural speed to tap into. (Don't think I'll ever reach your 1500m PB!) I might join you for the Orion race - and Ladywell of course.

I'm currently on the reserve list for the A team in the Southern road relays on Sunday, due to some injury scares. Not sure how I feel about this, especially as I'm planning another big MP session at Battersea Park tomorrow. At least it's Sunday rather than Saturday, so an extra day for recovery. And if I'm promoted it will be a short leg instead of a long one, so the pain will be over quicker.

Thanks very much for the personal advice. I still don't really know what I'm doing, so any tips on slowing down / building up speed and so on are welcome. I'll aim for 5:10 next time around, my best average paces so far are 5:17/km for a 10k run, and 4:20/km for a 5k.

Yeah, that’s fine, I’ve got racers for shorter road running and can do longer off road runs in the meantime. I specifically want the epic reacts (Nike fanboy) but those Salomans seem decent and reduced on wiggle at the moment

Practising pacing should definitely help with the 10k time then.
If you do 21mins for a 5k and 52mins for a 10k then I'd think you'll find a lot of time with some regular running.

Interesting, be intruiged to see how it goes for you. I've stepped my mileage up massively this marathon cycle but my previous training was neither quality nor quantity so it's hard to say what's paying off (or currently whether it is paying off).

Nice article... Over the past couple of years I feel I've fallen into the trap of just running (and cycling) a mediocre number of junk miles. I'm just playing about with my schedule at the moment but I'm trying to be more disciplined about giving each session a focus.

I suspect I'll be aiming for something like 3x runs per week loosely based on a Jack Daniels plan (but currently Tuesday intervals, Thursday threshold, Weekend easy long run).

Use a tool like Jack Daniels's VDOT calculator to calculate your target training paces for different types of run.

http://www.coachdino.org/VDOTCalc.htm

The way it works is that you take a recent race performance and use that as an input (in this case I used your best 10k pace). The important output is the section of the right which tells you that based on your 10k time you should aim to run your easy runs at 6:43/km, your "threshold pace" should be 5:25/km and you should aim to hold 5:00/km for your interval sessions. It also predicts that based on your 10k, your target half marathon time would be about 1:58:34 (5:37/km) although I'd take those numbers with a serious pinch of salt.

In your case, the "best average paces" that you provide for 5 and 10k are very different (your 5k performance is considerably better than your 10k performance) and so this presents a quandry about which one to use to set your optimal training paces. In your case I would be inclined to use the 10km VDOT... this may be an underestimate of your true ability and may result in the training paces being too easy, but as a novice it's better to err on the side of caution and you can update your training paces as your best 10k effort improves.

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Ah, thanks for reminding me about VDOT. It looks like I've been training a bit too intensively, even more so when my 'rest' days tend to be spent on the turbo......Going to tone it back a tad- I surprised myself in a HM last year off training which didn't feel particularly intensive so hopefully will work out.

Another pace/race calculator I like is McMillan. As well as being pretty close on my own race paces in terms of predictions, I like the feature of having a pace range for different work-outs.

I agree with erring on the side of caution for a novice; if your 5k and 10k times aren't in line (suggesting an improvement in endurance fitness will help get your 10k time down), you could use the calculators to give you a range based on both times, so that you aim to run inside the 10k-based paces but make sure you're not running quicker than 5k-based paces... until your fitness improves.

Thank you very much for this! And also to @PhilPub for the tips. Tonight was much better. Will post more about it tomorrow.

Chorlton Runners done made a film about Fell Running for city dwellers:

https://youtu.be/Kk69hkPeOGQ

if your 5k and 10k times aren't in line (suggesting an improvement in endurance fitness will help get your 10k time down)

For me it's weight that hinders my endurance fitness and my VDOT. I couldn't get near the 10k time that was suggested by my 5k time and it got even worse with the longer distances.

I used this to help me keep track of my improving fitness as I trained a few years back (attempting to lose weight and get fit enough to survive a marathon). Of course I've put the weight back on and am starting from square one (for the 3rd time now).

I stuck each run in a spreadsheet and had it auto calculate the VDOT score (the formula is easy to find online). I then kept track of the VDOT score for the major distances: 5k, 10k, HM, M. (And differentiating between a 5k 'race' like parkrun and a 5k training loop, or my 10km training loop and an interval session that just happened to be ~10km.)

What I noticed is that as the weight dropped off all the VDOT scores increased but the gap between 5k VDOT and HM VDOT narrowed, as the weight increased so did the gap (even though "fitness" was being maintained or even improved).

I guess that at some weight the VDOT scores for the various distances would settle close together (assuming they came from a race at each distance). No idea whether this weight would be attainable for me but there's only one way to find out. The improving (and narrowing gaps) VDOT scores were definitely motivational.

(What I'm trying to do in the copious free time I don't have any of is automate the graphs and stats stuff so all I have to do is upload the .fit file and my stuff will analyse the .fit file, work out what kind of a run it was (by comparing it to my usual routes) and then tell me how I'm doing. Something like a cross between Strava, Garmin Connect and TrainingPeaks but without any of the Social wank. Swimming and cycling too as I am proto-slvlss.)

Anyway, less talk, more running (once this lurgy is gone from my chest).

^ Interesting! I've not seen a similar relationship as I've lost weight/got fitter, but then (a) I lost most of my excess weight before even starting to run competitively, and (b) I only started running regularly in the first place to "do" the marathon, so my training had an endurance bias from the outset before I discovered the joys of knowing how painful a proper 5k race should feel.

Speaking of weight, I've just had my best ever non-cheat (i.e. first thing in the morning, not after a long run when I'm dehydrated) weigh-in, 67.5kg. I think this makes me at least 1kg lighter than marathon pb weight a couple of years ago, which the calculators tell me, other things being equal (massive caveat!), is worth about 2 mins over marathon distance. We'll see...

I managed another hard tempo run last night, just squeezing in at target MP (5:43/m) for 11.5 miles, but felt very light-headed for the final mile or so. I'm hoping this is the residual effect of giving blood on Monday. Whether the road relays go ahead this weekend or not, it will be quite light on training volume, so I hope to be back to full energy by next Tuesday, which is scheduled to be my biggest MP session of the campaign. Not sure of the exact details but will be somewhere in the vicinity of 14-15 miles @ MP, so if I'm still on pace for that, game on.

Everyone around me is ill ("I'm sorry you're feeling like shit, Mrs Fix, and I want to make you feel better, but don't touch me or even breath in my direction") and I keep having ridiculously early nights to ward off the germs' embrace. It's working; just.

But I nearly stayed under the duvet this morning. Everything aches, tough session planned, why-don't-I-get-to-take-sick-days, etc.

Crawled upright and made it out to do the first interval session in ages. A pseudo-Yasso thing. 10 x 800 @ 10k-ish pace with 1min walk recoveries. Got through it. Indulged in psychological trickery by doing the last one a little more quickly and convincing myself the minutes-to-hours correlation will happen (2:50).

I love the fact Regents Park cinder track is free and close to work, but I hate the tight radius bends and the fact that if you pick an outer lane to lessen the centrifugal shenanigans, you have to cope with off-camber topography that threatens to ping you down a ditch and into the canal. Still, mustn't grumble.