One tempo and one hill workout each week - Anyone with success?

Nope. No one in the history of running has tried out two workouts a week.

Cool, man.

Bump

Yes it definitely can work. What is your racing schedule like? If you won’t be racing for a while, you could stack a great base period. A schedule could look like this:

M: off

T: easy + 6 x 100m strides w/ walk back recovery

W: hills. Start with 10 x 30s for two weeks, then 2 x 6 x 30s hills for two weeks, the. 2 x 8 x 30s hills for two weeks. That is plenty. You may find that the 2 x 6 x 30s hills is enough. Long warm-up and cool down for mileage.

Th: easy

F: easy + short hill sprints. 6-8s all out with 3:00 walking recovery. Start with 4 and work to 6. You don’t need more than that.

S: tempo/threshold work. Very important not to go too fast. I’d much rather see you go a little too slow. I don’t know what you’re current volume is, or if you’ve done this type of work before, but ease into it. You don’t need to go crazy. Especially since you said you’ve overdone it in the past (also why I have an off day in the schedule).

S: EASY long run. 90-105 minutes tops. Again, work up to this.

Why not OP? Can get plenty fit like that. Longer hills aren't going to be too different from knocking out hard intervals on the track.

Here's what I think, for what it's worth:

If you want to do two workouts a week, that's fine, but do them on a two week cycle.

In other words:

Do hills and tempo, as you plan. But add in Track/Speed sessions- longer reps and shorter reps- so that you four workouts every two weeks or so but you're hitting all the elements.

And remember, it doesn't have to be a weekly cycle. If you can handle it, do 3 workouts in a 10 day cycle. Whatever suits you.

I'm assuming that you're working and have other factors in your life that prevent you from being just a runner.

Older runner here, but it works for me. I'll do this in my base training, run as many miles as possible during the week with doubles, threshold on the weekend, short hill repeats mid-week. As I get closer to the target race I will add intensity and reps to the hill repeats.

I think I can run pretty close to my potential with this formula, but it's even better if I throw in a couple of 2 mile time trials in the weeks leading up to the goal race.

This is pretty much what OAC does 80% of the year. Between 15 and 25x 200m hills and 200m on track + 6-10 miles of tempo + moderate 20 mi LR.

What's the rationale to doing the hill work midweek and tempo the day before the long run? I feel like I usually see this kind of schedule with the workouts flipped. And that seems to work for me, since the tempo and long run are kind of similar stimulus and the tempo is harder on the body than 10x30" hills (at least for me personally)

I can do it either way, long run on Saturday and tempo on Sunday. I prefer tempo Saturday and long run Sunday. But I don't think it makes much difference if you run these properly. They key is that the long run should be easy and the tempo not too hard.

I personally believe the long run is not that important for 5K-10K. I'm thinking about experimenting with eliminating long runs completely and replacing it with another day of doubles. I'm curious about the results.

With the schedule I outlined above, I like to have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as pretty solid mileage days. Friday is an easy day, a little lower mileage. The second purpose of Friday is the hill sprints. Some speed development work. Ideally this is done fresh but, as a distance or muffled distance runner, I get that you need some mileage. The hill sprints are a very different stimulus from a tempo or threshold workout, which is why I place the Friday speed the day before a threshold or tempo. Going back to my earlier point, the cadence of the week has three days solid, an easy day on Friday, two days that are pretty big back-to-back, then an off day on Monday. I like chunking things this way but you certainly don’t have to. It’s just personal coaching philosophy.

Appreciate all of the responses. I'm currently doing 50mpw and have been doing that for 6 months straight. I've also been throwing in tempos or cruise intervals here and there throughout. I just haven't done much more than that (3k/5k type stuff). I get a bit worried and confused on when and for how long I should focus on that stuff. I had always felt burned out the past 2 years. That was part of why I was thinking of just sticking to mileage, tempo, and one hill session a week to replace 3k/5k internal sessions. Some of you have good ideas. I was also thinking finding a 1 or 2min hill to run up and repeat 6-8 times.

Bumping for more thoughts/examples.

Just move on with life.

3k-5k pace intervals burnt me the f out in training whenever I sprinkled it in. It was taxing and left my tank feeling empty always.

I found I got fit af working the ends.

ie doing a bunch of slightly slower than tempo - faster than MP stuff by feel (effort based!) dropped into the middle of my regular runs (ran 80ish minutes 3 days during the week on a hilly trail).

And say 6x150 up a hill at 800/mile pace to remind my legs how to go fast & put out power.

(And a 90-120min weekend long run on top of all this, probably 70-80mpw)

This had me fit af & keeping up with some solid guys post-collegiately on the local road/xc circuit without doing "workouts". I actually skipped all my club's workouts and just raced/did long runs with them. Those dudes loved to race in practice lol.

Just another idea on the tempos. At least for awhile I always did better by taking my LT pace, let's say it's 5:30 (if I'm approximately a 4:30 miler), and add 20 seconds to it, for 5:50, and run a longer tempo like 40 minutes at that pace vs. struggling running 20-25 at 5:30. You'll still get a great aerobic benefit and it might keep your mind feeling fresher.