5k Schedule Advice

Hi there, last year I trained for and ran the Sussex Marathon in April and the Portsmouth Coastal Marathon a few days ago. In 2013 I would like to (after resting in January) step down in distance and improve my speed, starting with the 5k. Here's a couple of my pb's:

Marathon= 3hr38                 Half Marathon= 1:26               5K= 19:02

I'd really like to have a hard, focussed training program for taking a serious wedge off my 5K pb, hopefully with 2 quality speed sessions a week.

The smartcoach was useless and told me to only do one speed session a week, with all the other runs at 7:20something pace, which will definitely not see me improving my pace.

I currently run about 25-30mi a week, usually with a tempo run, long run and easy run. (Because last year I was focusing on marathon performance, decided that speed sessions were not essential.) I have a 1yr old daughter which I look after a lot, so really don't want to increase my milage by much, (hence targeting a shorter distance!)

Does anyone have any good advice?

Paul.

Hi Paul

Two speed sessions I used to do every week in summer in 2008 which got me to 16:15. 8x2 mins (3k pace) with 1 min recovery and 4x5 mins (about 15 sec slower than 5k pace) with 2 mins recovery.  If you can record your distances (through a GPS watch) you'll see big improvements upto about 8-10 weeks, then the gains will plateau assuming you do not change other sessions.

Another similar session would be 6x1k with 1 minute. Drop the tempo run if you intend to train for 5k. Also try adding 5x100m strides to all non interval sessions.

Check out McMillian calculator for exact paces according to your best most recent time.

How long would you think my long runs should be? I would have thought that as I've just come off marathon training, about 10miles would be sufficient to keep a bit of endurance?

10 miles is more than sufficient for the long run.