Hit a plateau with race times - add more miles or intensity

You can't keep building up indefinitely. At some point you have to call your season over, take a break, re-build base, and plan a new campaign.

How do you know 5K/10K are your best distances? Have you experimented with shorter/longer races?

Also, it's hard to say how you should change your training if you don't say what your training has been.

One thing that stands out to me is that you said you "had a pretty great year or so of racing". If you've been training - let alone racing - for about a year, YOU NEED A BREAK. You're probably beginning to feel it now, but you're getting burned out from not taking a Break. Take 2 weeks off - don't run for a week, and then jog every couple of days for 1-2 weeks. You need a break to rest and rejuvenate your legs.

Also, what's your current mileage and week like? If you're only running 40 miles per week I'd say add mileage, but if you're running 80+ I'd say add quality.

Ok, so when I say I’ve had a good year, I mean I’ve been racing well this year so far. From January - now. I’m only racing 5km and 10km at the moment just as I’d like to get quicker before moving up.

the training I’ve been doing has consistently been between 50-60 miles per week for the last 18 months. Never gone higher than 65 miles but haven’t really had any weeks lower than 50 for the last 2 years.

i do have regular easy weeks where I’ll slow all runs down and have 0 sessions those weeks.

Training has also been very basic. Most weeks I’ll have a mix of ‘tempo’ and ‘speed’ work. Anything from tempo reps up to 5-6 mile tempo runs and some 5km ‘feel’ reps on the track.

My plan was to keep my training basically the same until I stopped improving. And I feel like I’ve gotten to that point right now.

or I’m just being over critical of the past 2-3 race results.

thanks for the above replies. Hope this more info helps

18 months of solid, tempo/speed training on 50-65 miles per week is really quite good. I do think you will now need to change something. But it might be less than you think.

I agree with the other poster who suggested a bigger break. I would take a short time of zero running. Get it out of your system a little bit. Could be a chunk of days. Could be a week+. Then spend a few weeks running easy and just getting the motions going again. These longer breaks are important. And they give a bigger reset than the regular down weeks you've been doing.

Then start building mileage back up. And see if you can get up to 70 or more. Maybe touch on 80 a bit. Do some workouts at this time, but these should be minor league workouts. Strides, fartleks, progression runs when you feel good, stuff like that. Don't worry about times/paces, just run them by feel.

After you're comfortably holder higher mileage, then put some of your standard workouts back in. Hit the tempos hard and the track intervals harder. Make the recovery runs very, very easy, and keep getting lots of miles in. I think you'll find that the forced rest and then building up higher than you've been could yield some really good results. I don't know where in the world you live, but there will probably be quite a few fall 5 and 10k's that you could target. Maybe even a 10 miler or half marathon if that sounds at all fun.

more mileage. then 10*1k threshold and a long tempo. Train like Ingebrigtsens

You can find fast improvement if you train smart from the level you are right now. How does your training look like when it comes to quality? With 16:15 and 33, can you give examples of your workouts in pace, amount, rest, distances? Do so and I will tell you what to do to still improve. Cheers!

Coach JS, you are the last person that should be giving advice to an athlete who says he hit a plateau. Look at your only verifiable elite athlete, Sammy Nyokaye, and his results over the years since you started coaching him. Plateau and then getting worse and worse.

OP, do you enjoy training? Do you look forward to sessions? Are you having fun?

I do enjoy my running a lot. And most of the time I enjoy sessions as well. I’m in a good routine where I just do alot of my running without really thinking about it.

i think my sessions have lacked an overall structure but other than that have always been pretty consistent.

the types of workouts have been simple as I say. I aim to get 20-30 minutes of ‘fast’ running in per week. So that could be something like 10 x 2 mins, 8 x 3 mins. 15-20 x 1 min, k reps around 5-7, mona fartlek etc. Then for my tempo workouts it’s a mix of continuous running around 30 mins or split tempos such had 3 x 8, 3 x 10 etc.

will usually have a shortish recovery then 1-2 mins.

i don’t really enjoy the continuous tempo runs as such. Never have. And they’re probably what’s lacking. I’ve started to use Parkrun as a bit of a tempo/threshold workout which I do enjoy.

last week looked like this

m - 50 mins easy

t - 75 mins hilly(ish) loop

w - 75 mins easy

t - 60 mins easy

f - 75 mins hilly(ish) loop

s - Parkrun 5km in 17:30 + 5 x 30 secs

s - 90 mins

all easy runs approx 8:00-8:30 per mile pace

61 miles for the week

Your training looks solid. A good routine, as you say. But it's also, as you put it, a lot of running without really thinking about it. In my opinion, what you need to add isn't so much quality or mileage but "thinking about it." I don't think you have to adopt a plan and stick to it - at least not yet. If I only added one thing to your training so that you could break through your plateau, it would be periodization. How can you take your weekly plan and progress it from week to week over 6-12 weeks so that you're in peak shape for a goal race? If your goal race is a 5K, you'd probably focus on your "speed" day and incrementally increasing the volume or intensity, or decreasing the rest, of those workouts. For 10K, you'd probably focus on you "tempo" day and try gradually raise the volume and get it closer to 10K pace.

You’ve plateaued because you’re doing plateau training. You’ve got one workout this whole week that would help you run faster over 5k/10k.

t, f, and s is easy? if so bad plan and very monoton

suggestions:

1) 1 rest day/week

2) 2 quality sessions (you have only one)

3) longer long run

Thanks for this. For the other 2 posters above mentioning it only being one workout day, that’s just an example of last week, not every week. Most weeks has 2 workouts.

at the moment I’m just running and racing altogether. This year I just thought racing more would equal faster times as I’d improve through regular racing but in reality I think it’s starting to hinder instead of help.

I’ve decided to pull out of the next race I had planned so this means the next race on my calendar will be 14 weeks away. I think this gives me enough time to reset and restructure.

based on that, how would you set 14 weeks to be in peak 10km shape. I have never done a specific block for a race but I’d like to get back under 34 mins. As I’ve said previously, pb is 33:57 set in January and last 10k 2 weeks ago was 34:40.

and just for further info/summary: early 30’s male. 155lbs averaging 60mpw

1. Agree with everyone that says take a break. Plateau is good indicator that you need one. Break = time with no running. Mental and physical recharge.

2. You don't necessarily have to add anything, but stagnation is best solved by doing some thing(s) differently.

3. I would drop down time/mileage down another day so that you have 2 days around 45-50 mins easy.

4. Increase long run beyond 90 minutes. You can probably handle 15 miles for a long run, even if it's just every other week.

5. Change up your fast days. Lots of suggestions so far on that.

Long run is definitely lacking. I mainly do 11-13 miles so I’ll look to bump that up a bit and shave off some time from one of the 75 min runs. Thanks

Just throwing my .02 out there.

With 14 weeks to go I'd do something like a 1-1.5 week break. Then I'd spend 2-2.5 weeks getting running again and doing some light fartleks or a park run or two just for fun and practice.

Then you've got 10 weeks to target the race you're looking at. I like the funnel approach Canova and others talk about here. So in the beginning, your workouts will be either shorter and faster than 10k pace, or longer and a little slower. This is the time to do some 400s and 800s around 5k effort (effort not 5k PR pace). For the tempo runs I like longer, 30-45 minute unbroken tempos that are slower than HM pace. You said you don't love doing straight tempos. I do think they're valuable some of the time. And imo, it is actually easier to get good at them by doing longer/slower ones. Most people tempo too hard, and that is why they hate the classic 20 to 25 minute tempo.

When you're in the middle of your build up your interval work will be more like 1000s and 1200s closer to 10k pace with some decent rest. Your tempos might get shorter and closer to true tempo pace. This could be something like 3 x 15 minutes with each block being a little faster than the other one. Or what the other poster mentioned, 8-10 x 1k with a short rest.

You'll want to build to the bigger, 10k peaking style workouts and hit the hardest one around 10 days to 2 weeks out from the race. These are often things like 2 x 2 mile and 2 x 1 mile at 10k pace with less rest than you were doing in the previous weeks. Or, 5 x 2k. Or whatever is close to race distance with slightly longer intervals. There are a lot of options here. I also think it can be useful to race a 5k about 2-3 weeks before the goal race. Don't beat yourself up if the time is not exactly what you want. The goal here is to practice racing hard again.

And definitely push the long run out. In the early weeks you can do those at a very easy pace to ensure you're covering the distance. As your fitness progresses, you might find you're finishing the long runs a little on the quicker side. They aren't a workout, but they are brisk, that kind of feeling. I think regularly hitting 1:45 and getting close to 2 hours occasionally could give you some great aerobic strength gains.

Lastly, don't worry too much about this goal race in 14 weeks. Just see what is possible with a new to you, more periodized approach. Slowly build some fitness, learn some things, then tweak it for next time. You're still very much at the early stages of your running life. You could improve for quite some time.

No joke: improve your springing ability, 60m dash time. How do you think elites win medals: by having good speed. At the sub elite level, you already have the endurance if you're running sub 5 min miles back to back... of course that must be sustained for optimal performance. Speed will carry you to faster times though.

Thanks for all your input. I’ll do some research into some of the canova plans and the structure.
definitely agree that the main reason for not enjoying the tempos is probably trying to run them a bit too quickly.
I’ve actually got another 10km lined up on a very quick course 7 weeks after the race I’ve mentioned there. So hopefully will have 2 decent attempts at a pb to end the year.

If you don't have any of these books already, they could be good resources for you.

Run Faster, by Brad Hudson.

Running Formula, by Jack Daniels.

Faster Road Racing, by Pete Pfitzinger.

My library actually has copies of all of them, so could be a good place to check first. Otherwise they're easy to get new or used.

And that other 10k race 21 weeks out should be great. You could even make that your A race if you wanted and make the 14 week out race your B goal. It'd give you more time to take a break and get back into training. Either way it should be great, it's just good to have options.

Time to hit the sazule yellow brick road