A Case Study On Approaching Training Differently
A personal best can make you feel on top of the world and is a great way to kick off the year. A 5km personal best can be something you can work into your training block as it gives you the freedom to still concentrate on your "A" race coming up in the future.
Some runners see the distance as the main challenge in running pushing further and further, but at one point they decide they want to improve their speed. With a large endurance base behind them improving speed should be easy to do but it may mean cutting back on the weekly milage to allow a runner to train at a higher intensity and allowing sufficient time to recover.
This is where the problems start as a lot of runners struggle to cut back their weekly training volume as they see it as a sign of weakness or feel they might loose their endurance base. The truth is very different though, if your training at the right intensity the block of training should feel challenging and should hopefully allow you to improve your speed over longer distances. A 5km training challenge might be exactly what you are looking for as it can:
- improve speed over longer distances.
- improve confidence when running fast.
Enter The 5km PB Challenge
I've been helping my girlfriend put together a training plan for her third Half Ironman in 2019 where November 2018 was the start of a training block to get ready for Ironman NZ 70.3. As a way to get into the grove and get motivated for the coming months of training we discussed doing a 31 day run streak for the month of December, which sounded like a good plan but instead we opted for taking on her 5km PB as a side project during the earlier stages of her half Ironman training.
History Of The Running
Kirsty has been running for a long time now and has a lot of consistent training behind her, including;
- A long history of running but now getting into triathlon as well.
- 11 marathons and over 30 half marathons.
- 2 years of swim training and 1 year of training on the bike with 2 half Ironman races behind her.
- Kirsty has a long history of running but lacks confidence in her own ability.
After a marathon in April and her first 50km run done and dusted in early October, we thought the best place to start would be with a 5km time trial to see exactly where she was with her speed and how much improvement she actually needed to make. It was a great result to start as it was clear Kirsty was still running fast and was able to run her 3rd fastest 5km time without any dedicated speed training. A lot of the time if runners are not used to doing these types of time trial sessions, you could see a good improvement in times by simply doing the time trial again in a couple of weeks, and for Kirsty I think this would have also been the case. Her result for the 5km time trail was 23 minutes and 48 seconds, with her personal best for the run only 8 seconds faster.
Dedicated 5km Training Sessions
As she had come off a big block of training over the Winter, running long distances was not going to be a problem moving into this speed work as her endurance base was already at a high level. As well training for a half ironman, her bike training would be sufficient with her rides equally 90 to 120 minutes during this time of the season.
With that in mind we decided on three key run sessions for the week with her longest run of 10km. This doesn't sound like much but with her swimming and riding this took her weekly training over 8 hours for the week. We decided on her long run would also include some tempo efforts of 2km. We would fit in a track session every Thursday to work on improving strength, cadence and speed. The idea of the track session was to be an easy session during the middle of a tough week.
She was hesitant to include these but I assured her they would actually be a welcome change and only take 40 minutes to complete. Her final quality session for the week was a speed workout on Saturday running 800m repeats with 200m walking breaks. As the weeks continued the speed of the 800m repeat also continued. The only other run was a 4km run after her long ride on Sunday, which was an easy run allowing her to get used to running off the bike during a triathlon.
If you were to incorporate something like this into your training, you could quite easily do cross training or and easy run on days you weren't performing a quality session.
A Typical Training Week
- Monday: Rest Day
- Tuesday: Cross Training
- Wednesday Afternoon: Long Run(10km) 2km Warm up, 2 x 2km At Tempo with 2km Easy for recovery
- Thursday Afternoon: Track Run(6km) 2km Warm up, 6 x 400m varying pace and cadence, 2km Cool Down
- Friday Afternoon: Cross Training
- Saturday Afternoon: Interval Run(8km), 1km Warm up, 7 x 800m Interval with 200m walking
- Sunday: Cross Training
Cross training for Kirsty was a mix of Swimming and Cycling, in line with her Half Ironman Training. All times for Tempo and Interval runs were calculated using Jack Daniels VDOT Calculator, using her initial 5km time trail
So What Were The Result
As you can see with her Half Ironman training, her weekly schedule was actually pretty full but having said that we made sure to include key workouts to improve speed while making sure we were allowing enough time in between for recovery. The long term goal was to improve her 5km time that would hopefully improve her speed in longer distances allowing her to chase her Boston Qualifier in 2019.
Her run was pretty perfect on the day. We waited till the 31st of December to end the year with a bang and she did that running 23 minutes and 7 seconds, which was over 40 seconds improvement on her previous time trial and 30 seconds improvement on her 5km personal best.
Summing It Up
We sometimes forget about speed, and this was a good way to improve speed during the course of her regular training block. We changed her training to allow her enough recovery in between hard days, which allowed her to train harder as the weeks went on. We also cut out any massive training sessions which would have resulted in Kirsty needing a few extra days to recover.
About the Author
Hey I'm Vince, an Aussie living in New Zealand, trying my best to make the most of the time I have. I work as a Software Engineer but love to run and all aspects of it, including geeking out on the latest science to help get the most out of my body.
@runningproject