October Running Plan

I finished three straight weeks of training for the Turkey Trot 5K at Potts Field. I know I said I would add distance to the Long and Tempo runs now but I am going to lower their paces instead. I cannot continue running my Long run at 10:40 min/mi. I cannot run that slowly, it is just not natural. For October I will run Long at 10:00 min/mi and Tempo at my anaerobic threshold of 9:00 min/mi. I am going to run 18 10-20-30 intervals on Tuesday. This is down from the 20 per day I ran in September because I am changing from resting after 5 min into jogging at the 55th St underpass and Wellman Ditch bridge. That knocks out one interval for the outbound one mile but I will take a good rest when I turn around. Taking the Easy runs as a recovery run after each of the hard days (Intervals, Tempo and Long) has worked very well. I'll do three more weeks of this and then find a Halloween 5K to see where I am at. Then I will have three more weeks of training for the Thanksgiving 5K. I hope not increasing my mileage keeps me injury free until then.

I Need More Recovery Time

The old adage of taking one day off from running for every mile you raced does not apply to me anymore. I raced 5K eight days ago and I am still hurting. It was my first race in 2 1/2 years and I lost the ability to land on my forefoot at about 1 mile. My knees took a pounding for the last 2 miles and I felt twinges in my damaged left knee on this morning's run. I did run 4x5 10-20-30 intervals four days after the race and that was a mistake. Since then I have stopped intervals and have just been running easy 2 miles. I may continue that into next week if the knee pain persists. I also have reassessed my September training plan to address my lack of endurance in last weeks 5K. I will go back to Tempo runs in place of one of the 10-20-30 interval days. My week will be: Mon-Off, Tue-2mi Easy, Wed-2mi Tempo, Thu-2mi Easy, Fri-4x5 10-20-30 Intervals, Sat-2mi Easy, Sun-4mi Easy.

September Running Plan

I looked up my VDOT in Daniels' Running Formula Chapter 3 Measuring Your Starting Point. For my 26:24 time, 8:30 min/mi pace, in yesterday's 5K race it is VDOT = 36. Then I went to another table in the book and found my Easy and Long run pace should be 10:40 min/mi. I have been doing Easy runs of 2 mi three times a week at around 9:40 min/mi and Long runs of 4 mi once a week at around 10:20. The Easy runs have been way too fast to allow for adequate recovery from the 10-20-30 intervals and Long runs. I did not know that until yesterday. My Easy runs in September will still be 2 miles but at a 10:40 pace. The actual Long run pace is only 20 seconds per mile too fast and I plan on increasing the Long run from 4 mi to 6 mi by the end of September. This should slow my pace down to 10:40 and increase my endurance because of the increased distance. I do not plan on changing my paces in my 10-20-30 intervals because running the 90%-70%-30% of maximum speed in each phase is overkill. I will continue to sprint for 10 seconds, concentrate on my form for 20 seconds and jog for the 30 second recovery. I do plan on increasing my number of 10-20-30 intervals from 3x5 twice a week to 4x5 twice a week by the end of September. The total distance, warm-up + intervals + cool-down, for Intervals will stay at 3 mi because I will add the fourth set to the cool-down. The subjects in the Danish 10-20-30 training study ran between 3x5 and 5x5 sets so I will be right in the middle. There is no local 5K race in September and I will have to wait until October to see if I can improve my 5K time.

Coal Creek Crossing 5K

I had a time of 26:24 in the Coal Creek Crossing 5K this morning. I am very happy with this time as I last raced in April 2010. The uncertainty of knowing if 10-20-30 training was working is over, it works. I intend to run several more 5K's in the next few months trying to improve my time.