Training for a sub-40 minute 10k? Ha, we’ve heard this story before, haven’t we? For whatever reason, this just seems to have been the big block for me. Way back in 2016, I set myself an ambitious plan to run sub-90 at the Bristol Half Marathon, and achieved it. Since then, I’ve just never really made any further headway. I’ve tried a few times to target 40 minutes, but for various reasons, it has never come off. So, we start again.
My target race is the Bideford 10k on 7 May – I ran the 10 miler there in November, so I have a good idea of the course. It has a little lump early on, but nothing particularly significant. The wind can be a pretty significant factor, but to be honest, that’s not much different anywhere else, so I’m not going to get too caught up on that.
For my plan, I’m self-coaching, combining the training philosophies from Faster Road Running and Daniels’ Running Formula with my own knowledge to make something that fits me. Or that’s the hope, anyway! I’ve explored the possibility of having a coach in the past, but remain convinced that I can do it myself. Possibly, if I don’t make the breakthroughs that I want this year, I might have to relent. But for now – I’m going to knuckle-down, be positive, and give this plan my all.
I’ve got reasonable mileage behind me – 30 to 35 miles per week feels pretty normal these days, and I feel confident that I can push up into the 40s throughout much of this training block. I think key workouts are going to be threshold work, something that I often neglect when I don’t have a written plan. I added them into my running last year, and did pretty well before getting ill in the autumn, and missing my target races.
So, introduction done, let’s have a look at week one:
- Monday: Rest day
- Tuesday: 7 miles easy with 6 x 12 sec hill and 6 x 100m strides
- Wednesday: 9 miles steady
- Thursday: Rest day
- Friday: 8 miles threshold: 3 x 1 mile at threshold pace and 6 x 200m reps
- Saturday: 3 miles recovery
- Sunday: 10 miles long
Monday:
Rest day – I really want to be using these days to do some yoga and foam rolling work, but… I didn’t.
Tuesday:
I headed out for an initial five miles mostly around some country lanes. I averaged roughly 8:30 per mile for this part of the run, which seems about right, with a heart-rate around 130-140 bpm. The hill I chose for the hill reps was a little too shallow really, I’ll need to find something a bit more significant before doing these again. My pacing was also a bit all over the place. The strides after went much more smoothly, though I’m never quite sure exactly how hard to push on strides!
Wednesday:
For my midweek steady mileage, I’ll generally be trying to do these with my running club. This week, I was leading Group 2, which has a 7:30 to 8:00 per mile pace band, slightly quicker than my own steady pace band of roughly 7:45 to 8:45 per mile. I got out beforehand for 1.7 miles alone, and then managed to keep the club run to the slower end of the band, 7:55 per mile on average. This actually felt slightly harder than I would have liked at times – my legs still seem slightly fatigued from some cycling I did last week, and it just seemed to make everything feel a little harder than it should have done. Still, nine midweek evening miles done.
Thursday:
Rest day – still no yoga or foam rolling.
Friday:
The big one – threshold day! I was working down in Cornwall, and wanted to work out a way to fit this in nicely, rather than leaving it until I was home and doing loops of the Bathpool estate. (I’m sick of loops of the Bathpool estate.) So, I worked out that I could come off the A38 at Bodmin and do this session on the Camel Trail, a multi-use trail the follows the River Camel. (See what they did with the name there??) This worked pretty well, the surface was generally very good despite some light rain, and it was mostly flat. More on that later.
By the time I wrapped up my job and arrived, it was about half 12, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which wasn’t ideal preparation for a speed session. I started off along the trail for a couple of miles warm-up, and then cranked into the first mile threshold interval. I was targeting 6:44 for these. As usual, I set off too fast, but ended up not too far ahead of target pace, with a 6:41. The one minute rest went far too quickly before I ran the second in 6:42. Having hit half distance for the whole session, I turned around. For the first half of the run, I’d noticed a slight downhill assistance. For the second half, I definitely noticed the slight uphill resistance. Oh, and the headwind! Still, I hit 6:42 again for the third interval, though I really pushed my heart-rate up into the high 170s by the end of it. Still, the averages across each interval weren’t too far off: 169, 167, 172.
The quicker repeats didn’t go so well. My legs were very weary, the climb was very obvious in places, and twice I had to extend my recovery because of awkward road crossing. Aiming for 43 seconds, I ran 41, 39, 42, 42, 44, 45. By the time I finished this, my legs felt absolutely trashed. My watch declared the training effect of the run was 3.9 aerobic and 2.5 anaerobic. I have no idea what those numbers specifically mean, but they are much bigger than I normally see! As long as I can recover nicely from it, this was a great workout.
Saturday:
My plan called for three miles recovery, which tied in perfectly with our parkrun plans for me to run with my daughter. However, Lolly woke up ill, and her and my daughter decided to stay at home. I still headed out, going to Marine Parade parkrun where I met up with Kirk and Dawn. It can be far too easy to get caught up and run too fast at parkrun, so I kept my hoodie on, and did the first kilometre with Kirk, who had plans for a sub-30 finish time. I kept things pretty steady thereafter for a 28-minute finish, and was really happy to see Kirk sneak in just under 30 minutes.
Sunday:
Almost always my least favourite run of the week – the long run. I’ve always preferred running fast to running slow, and I often find Sunday long runs a battle to get myself out the door. Still, whether it was the positivity of the plan, and knowing how this run slotted in with the others, or just the sunshine, I’m not sure, but today felt pretty good. After a reasonably sedate first four miles, which averaged 8:37 per mile, I pushed on for the remaining six, averaging 7:50 per mile across those, including a surprising 7:35 for mile eight!
Considering that my legs still felt heavy from Friday, I was really happy with this run, though also a little worried that maybe I was overcooking things, and should have taken it all a little bit easier. We’ll have to see how next week goes.
Summary:
- Mileage planned: 37.0
- Mileage achieved: 37.5
This was a really solid first week. I came into it more fatigued than I would have liked, as I’d raced 5k and rode my bike for the first time in ages, but I still coped with the plan pretty well. The mileage was only a slight step up from what I’d been doing recently, but simply by adding a threshold workout in, the training effect seemed much higher. Next week ups the ante with harder workouts on both Tuesday and Friday, along with some slightly higher overall mileage, but I’m excited to see how it goes!