Advice on the Victory 5

My 5 mile PB was in the Victory 5 in 2004 - 32'33" at which point I was 2lbs lighter and only 17!

Anyway, things have moved on rather a lot. The day after my birthday this year (22nd June) I decided to take up base training. I got through about 8 weeks of this, and it all came crashing to an unfortunate end with a horrible gastric flu thing for a week, and what felt like the early onset of ITBS and soft tissue damage in my hip flexors.

After the week off for injury, I realised that I had my 4 remaining races of the year coming up, and that I needed to start thinking strategically about my training. The first race was the Overton 5, last weekend. A hilly 2-lap course, I managed to struggle round in 34'44". While I felt I couldn't have pushed it much harder, I still felt slightly concerned that this was so far outside my PB, especially as i'm trying to beat my PB this December. The other 2 remaining runs are the GNR and the GSR. The GNR will be treated as a LSR, because i'm pacing my mum, who is 33 years older and needs someone to help drag her round, as it's her first ever half. The GSR on the other hand is a different matter - i'd like to set a 10M PB on this of under 70 minutes if possible.

 At the moment I will just be working to maintain my condition until the GSR.

AFTER the GSR however, I was trying to come up with a schedule to get some hard and fast performance increases in during the weeks leading up to the Victory 5. What I came up with was basically a template 10k programme, which I assumed would give me both the speed and endurance to get me through a decent 5 miles.

My target is 32'00" OR under.

Day 1 - Hilly run: 4-5 miles inc. warmup and warmdown
Day 2 - 1 mile warmup, 12 x 400m @ 1:36, 0.5 mile warmdown (run at target 5k pace, 60 sec rests)
Day 3 - 1 mile warmup, 12 x 800m @ 3:20, 0.5 mile warmdown (run at target 10k pace, 90 sec rests)
Day 4 - LSR of 12.5 miles (totally aerobic pace, somewhere between 5.6 - 7.0mph)

Weekly total: approx. 25-35 mpw (including recovery runs if done)

On the days off I intended to include one Body Balance class and then possibly either an hour-long circuits class OR a 20 minute weights session followed by 25 minutes on the stationary bike. I would probably have one day of complete rest a week; however there is some possibility of adding random 30 minute recovery runs on the days when I am not doing the above four work sessions.

Can someone please criticise/praise/advise/scold etc.

Thanks.

Hi Paul,

Definitely praise, not criticism! It sounds like you are very organised and well motivated, and have an excellent plan to perform well at the Victory 5. I'm no speedy runner but have a lot of experience (been running for 16 years) so just a couple of points for you to consider / mull over:

1.) The speed sessions you do sound good - I take it you have about a 1 or 2 day gap in between? For variety you could vary where you do the session (sorry if you do this already) i.e grass 1 week, road the next, track the following.

2.) The 5m race you were a bit disappointed with - I'd say dont give up heart, it was a hilly course, and I'm guessing the Victory 5 will be flatter, so you'll go faster on the day. Also as you've described your recent illness / ITBS problem, you were probably still not 100% on form on the day.

3.) I'd keep up with 1 complete rest day per week. Over the years I've tried to run / train everyday, but after 5-6 weeks of this the body eventually gave way, and injury set in.

4.) Recovery runs - I agree stick to about 2, between 20 - 35 mins in length, will help sustain your mileage for the week. Sometimes I mix in a few faster strides at the end, but you already have some good speed sessions in place, so not mandatory.

5.) In terms of the GSR, where you'd like a good time and the Victory 5 race - how much gap is there between these races? Definitely realistic to aim for PB's in both if they are a few weeks apart.

6.) Finally just keep up the good work - you have youth on your side so I'd say go for it!

ditch the shorter intervals for some proper length reps of a mile. You'd be better off trying to develop your VO2 max in this way than the shorter reps which seem to be weighted towards a track runner's programme - 1500m runner perhaps?
Don't do your intervals on the track either - do them out on the road where the road goes, down, round corners,etc. You're aiming at real world conditions that replicate the conditions and terrain of the target event - track is not good for this in my opinion.
Mile reps will be about 6m30s in length which (with 2 or 3mins rest) will develop your engine in the most efficient time. Knock out 3 of these in week 1, 4 in week 2,etc then when you get to 6 reps, start reducing the rest between reps (from 3 mins to 2 mins)

Other real world intervals are 2 x 20mins at target 10k pace with 5mins rest inbetween

Forgot to mention 1 thing  - Do a 5m time trial about 3 - 4 weeks before the 5m race. As M M above says select a route which will be similar to the course of the Victory 5, so you get an idea of how you will perform on the day.

And for the weeks when you are racing, I'd knock the speed sessions down to one per week - i.e a Tuesday with a race on a saturday or sunday.

Paul - essentially what you should be doing is looking at VO2max intervals to develop your top-end speed. Just google VO2max intervals and see what comes up - cycling and running are very similar in this regard with the length of the intervals being the same (between 4-8mins) so have a look at the cycling stuff as well.
I'd also suggest a tempo session once a week as well - the kind of pace you could sustain for an hour and no more. the type of pace where if you raised the HR by a few beats you'd be stopping within 20yds or so. It's an unpleasant run tbh and mentally v hard but the rewards are well worth it. Start off with 30mins first, then add on 5mins a week as you get used to it and then stop when you get to an hour.
Stick in your long run at a pace where you can hold a conversation in paragraphs;ie steady. For you this would be about 8min miling I would think.

Outside of these three key sessions, just run easy as and when. You seem to be fairly clued up with non-running training from your posts so keep with these if you feel it's benefitting you.

http://www.coolrunning.com/major/97/training/hampson.html

http://www.pfitzinger.com/marathontraining.shtml

couple of examples of training VO2 max and tempo intervals

I agree with alot thats been said, except I wouldn't ditch the 400m reps. 400s can improve your leg speed and if the intervals are short enough, stimulate your VOmax too. Personally I'd run them faster than 5K pace, between 1500m-3K pace would be better.

Have you actually done a 12 X 800m session? I doubt it, I think this is way to optimistic. 5-7 X 800m would be enough and I'd run them faster than 10K pace, 5K pace would be ideal.

Longer reps of upto a mile would be great If you can do 4 at 10K pace, thats ideal. Tempo session as described above 2 X 20mins (5mins recovery) are great too. Don't run your LSR too slow, 2mins slower than 10K pace, no slower.

If you are prepared to train for 6 days/week then why don't you run them all. Easy sessions between your tough sessions will do far more good than the other stuff you've suggested. It would get your mileage upto 40/week which is what you need to improve. A couple of weight sessions on your easy days would be good too.

Hi, I don't really do as much speedwork as I should do... at the minute it's once or twice a week but I was base training pretty much all the summer until a couple of weeks ago.  Managed to crack under 40 mins for the 10k last weekend (woo!)

 I agree that the amount of reps on the 800m sessions is possibly a bit high, I would usually do 800s at 5k pace and the most I've done has been 7.

 The lactate threshold tempo run is a very useful one though... it can be very hit or miss though depending on how you feel at the time.  2x 20 mins is good, as is 1 x 30, doing it probably around 7 min miling or slightly less would be ideal.  It's the best thing for practising speed endurance at racing speed, as in a race it feels much easier just to give it that extra bit.

 Although getting up to about 40 mpw is the 'ideal' thing, you don't want to be doing it if you're setting off those injuries.  I would only throw in the recovery runs if you feel good, any signs of getting infections or niggly injuries and they can be scrapped without too much of a loss.  Also, I prefer to think of them as 'easy aerobic' runs rather than recovery so that it feels like I'm actually getting something out of it!  You seem pretty up on the stability, weights and cycling which is all good.  Keep that (more if you can't increase the running... although the stress on your body may lead to overtraining too), and the stretching after runs is always very important...

 have you been to a specialist running shop about whether your shoes are right for your gait? Also, even specialist running shoes get worn out a lot quicker than you think (I'm told it's every 400 miles by a professor in sports medicine... I hope not as I really can't afford 400 quid a year on running shoes!)

 Not even sure why I'm talking... you'll know more that I do, I've just being doing a module in sports medicine so I won't shut up about it!

Okay I'll bin the idea of doing 12 x 800m reps! I thought when I wrote it that it may have been a mite crazy.

Re: Recovery runs - my knees are the only thing putting me off this... they are notoriously stubborn with mileage. I've tried learning POSE and running in flats, running regular in neutral shoes, running in support shoes etc. None of which worked. .... and i'm definitely getting the least knee pain at the moment with Mizuno support shoes (I pronate) with an angled wedge in one.

 I'm happy with what I can and will do weights-wise. It's just other aerobic activities that i'm not sure about. Whether I should stick with 4 harder runnign sessions and complete rest days... or supplementary aerobic work on the bike/rower/pool.

I'll admit that the 800 session was a substitute for the tempo/threshhold run... simply because I'm not that keen on tempo/threshhold runs, but always quite enjoy track intervals and repeats. I find that they don't take that much out of me. For example, about 4 months ago I did 12 x 400m at the track and all fell between the 1:10 and 1:30 range. I took 60 seconds rest between each. At the same sort of time, I'd really struggle to run for 30 minutes at 7mm or quicker in a tempo run.

I heard 400-600 miles for shoes too, which doesn't last long. Depends on the build quality of the shoes though. I had some Nike Structure Triax's and they packed up after about 3 months of doing 25mpw. Pile of overpriced rubbish.

I discussed this situation with another RW Forumite - "<a href="http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/localiser/member.asp?sp=&v=6&MemNo=5163" title="Visit mmmm...marmite member profile">mmmm...marmite</a>", who suggested a schedule along the following lines:

Tue - 10M including 20-30 min @ threshold
Thu - 10M including eg., 4-6 x 1200m @ 10k pace or 4 x 2000m @ 10k pace with 2-3 min jog
Sat - 8M with 8-12 x 150m strides
Sun - long run eg., 15M progression run, start steady finish at ~marathon pace

 I quite like the sound of this I have to say. It'd bring me up to over 40mpw, which can only be a good thing, and has more of an endurance bias than own suggested schedule.

Any thoughts?

The above looks far better than what you originally suggested, my only concern is that every session looks reasonably tough, with nothing easy. But if you've had a good base, and are injury free you should be fine.

Sat. is the easiest session, so don't overdo the strides. Personally I'd do an Easy session on Wed. 5/6miles, but if you prefer to cross train then thats up to you.

The above schedule looks very good for 10K - half distance.