Hard work

I am using this period post Houston and before Melbourne (early October so marathon program will start in June) to try and get my 10k and hopefully then my half marathon time down a bit. I haven't picked a half yet but I am targeting the Bridges 10k and Challenge 10k races and would also like to run well at the HBF Run for a Reason in May.

Going from marathon training to 10k training has meant a bit of change in my weekly structure which now is basically:
Monday - easy 12k
Tuesday - intervals
Wednesday - easy 16k
Thursday - recovery 12-15k
Friday - tempo
Saturday - recovery 6k
Sunday - long/medium long run with progression in last quarter of run

With the Sunday progression run I am doing three hard/quick workouts a week. Volume over the last two weeks has been 93km and 97km. I am handling the volume no problems but am finding the Tuesday intervals in particular pretty challenging.

Last Tuesday was supposed to be 8 x 400m with a 200m float but I was cooked after 6 x 400m. I really pushed the 200m floats and was running them in 41-46secs with the 400m reps between 79-82secs. One of my running books is "Running Tough: 75 Challenging Training Runs" by Michael Sandrock. This session is one of the sessions in the book, although it is usually done on the track. Sandrock describes that this was one of Deek's classic workouts which he ran nearly every Tuesday morning for 15 years. While his times on the 400m reps were 63 secs when he was in peak shape to 69 secs in winter, his float was typically 45 secs. So I was doing most of my floats quicker than Deek used to do his. No wonder I was cooked after 6 reps.

Friday was a progressive tempo run where I ran 3 x 10 mins at 3:52/km then 3:48/km then 3:39/km and covered 7.95km in the 30mins. Ideally, I would have liked to go a bit quicker on the second and third 10 min sections but I think this is consistent with my shape based on how the Tuesday sessions have gone.

Sunday's (today) medium long run was 21.2km in 1:32. The progression was from kms 15-20 where I picked it up to 4:00/km and then down to 3:50/km at km 20.

This week, Tuesday's session will be 8 x 800m with a 2 min jog recovery, Friday will be 2 x 15mins @ 3:42/km with 1 min jog recovery between and Sunday will be a repeat of today.

I am just going to try hold on, be patient and hope the adaptations start to occur as I try to extend my 10km speed by increasing the length of my specific efforts. My most specific workout will be on the Tuesday about 11 days before the Bridges 10k.