Hi Seb,
Been back running a year now and have done five 10 ks since the summer, really enjoying running at moment,but all my races come in at between 54 and 58 minites and id really like to improve this, not too much but just need advice on the next steps to improve my time, I basiclly go out and run every second day,8 or 10 k, random routes, just run! no specialised training, so any advice to enhancing this,what to add to training etc would be great,
Thanks C
Hi C,
Your question is very common, people just go for a run and clock some mileage with no specifics.
What I would advise would be to have a target to reach in each runs, it does not need to be speed but skills such as 10x100m long stride with 200m rest could be one of them.
So if you do 4 runs a week for example, you can do 1 long run, 1 recovery run, 1 pace run and 1 speed work run.
Then in each session you can add what I called training targets : Example
- Long run : 12km with 3km warm up then 5k pacing 10km race pace then 2km pacing 5km race pace finish with 2km cool down with 10×100 long strides
- Recovery run : 5/8km at half marathon pace with 3x4min long strides / heels to glutes / landing mid foot. rest of 4min between
- Speed session : 3km warm up then 10×400 max with 20sec rest finishing with 2k cool down (lots of track session out there, becarefull not taking too difficult one at the start as it is a very common mistakes) record splitz and improve them
- Pace session : run 5/8km pacing every km minus 15secs compare to yor 10km race pace.
It’s just about planning your sessions really. Those are just examples but it give you an idea of structuring your week.
Few more examples here:
https://sites.google.com/a/sebfitness.com/sports-ireland/free-training-p…
Sebastien