I'm currently training for a 10k coming up in a few weeks, but also plan to shorter summer races (5k and below) until around September. I'm worried that if I keep doing hard, race specific workouts all the way through, I'll eventually fizzle out, as it'd be about 18-19 weeks from the start of my hard race specific workouts until the last race. I've recently been doing mostly 10k paced workouts with 4-5 miles of volume and a tempo workout each week with 50-60 mpw.
I'm thinking that this could unintentionally be a good way of breaking training into blocks - right now this is "strength / lactate threshold" training, and then after the 10k, I'd be more of "5k / vo2 focused" training and then eventually "1500 / mile focused" training where I'm building off the strength built from the previous block. I could see maybe see this working as long as the workout paces are conservative and controlled and I don't go to the well for any efforts.
The alternative approach I could think of would be that after my 10k, I consider that the end of one "cycle" and I can do a week or two of lighter training before switching over my focus to speedier workouts. This probably means I would not run as fast in early July, but could expect more of a positive trajectory all the way until September without too early of a plateau.
Any experiences with this would be appreciated. I'm more familiar with training in a schedule with more like base, then race specific phase for 8-10 weeks before the final goal race.