1500-5000 summer training

When are you peaking for?

Summer is longer than one week. What are you doing the other ones? Hopefully it’s not just running the same workouts but trying to be a little faster.

What are your current PRs? The workouts seem too hard to me. Why are you already doing three hard workouts a week? The Monday session seems out of place for this time of year.

Regarding improving top end speed, there is a great thread from a few years ago. Something like “5x60m all out.” The TLDR of the thread is that speed development should be short reps with long recovery and overall low volume. 5x60m or 6x50m with 3-4 minutes recovery would be great. You can start with 6x6-8s hill sprints with 3-4 minutes recovery. After a few weeks you can transition to the flat sprints. Flying 100s are too long. That’s not true speed development. I see distance runners do this all the time. They just do hard strides with inadequate recovery and call that speed development. It’s not. I also see people doing “speed development” after 8-10 mile runs. I’d cap it at 45 minutes at the most. If you want mileage for the day, double several hours later or before.

This seems like an excessive amount of speed stuff and workouts for midsummer… right?

too many workouts, too much speed. periodize better. the rest of july do tempos (real tempos not broken tempo/long repeats) and fartleks and maybe 1 or 2 mile/k repeat workouts. in august start incorporating more race pace work.

are you doing strides? core? plyometrics?

make the long run a little harder and maybe either a little faster or hillier. don't blast it but i think you can do better than flat 7 minute miles

volume volume volume

also wtf, why are you doing THREE workouts a week and a long run? if you keep this up you will peak the first 2 weeks of the season and then plateau or regress by october/november. make it two and put more focus on the long run. you say you want it to be solely aerobic and you're blasting tons of anaerobic stuff. you do realize you get a lot from easy runs as well right?

sorry for the three different posts but i'd do something like this

m easy double + strides and core

t long tempo + strength work

w easy + strides + core

t 10x1k + strength work

f easy double + strides + core

s double, A.M. pure speed + plyometrics, P.M. easy run

s 15 long run, hilly or progression or something

you shouldnt touch the track for 400s or 200s at all until september. if you want to run volume, run volume

I think 200s at the end of a tempo (once per week) can be useful. Even something like 30-35 minutes of tempo volume, something like 6-7x mile, followed by 4x300 at mile can be a very good workout as well but this is harder obviously. I wouldn't recommend doing 200s to close more than once per week, 300s more than once or twice per month, but it lets you stay in touch with faster stuff.

I typically workout Tuesday / Friday with a long run on the weekend (typically Sunday) and strides Monday / Thursday and on one of Wednesday / Saturday.

I had planned Monday / Thursday as workouts, Saturday as a long run, but because of how poorly Monday went from the start I cut it very short. Goal was 6x 1600 at tempo, but I felt terrible even after the 1st rep. I realized that 5000 at barely under 16:00 pace - completely broken up, and the total time more than a minute (over 5000m) off my 5000 PR, which is my weakest as I’ve never run one with real competition - shouldn’t take much out of me so jogging on Tuesday would be sufficient recovery.

It’s basically impossible for me to do a hilly long run based on where I am but I’ll probably alternate my long runs on a 3 week cycle - easy, moderately hard (maybe something like 14 in 6:30-35) and then somewhat hard (I’ve done 15 in 91 minutes before feeling very comfortable)

On a side note, why was I “logged out” of my anonymous username less than a day after posting? It’s still saved as my username but shows someone already used it from a different device. So I had to add an underscore

It's best to keep it simple and work on the basics, something like this:

M: 20' warm-up + 10x3' @ threshold r: 1' + 10' cool-down

T: 60' easy

W: 20' warm up + 10' @ subthreshold + 10x200 @ mile pace r: 1' + 10' cool down

T: 60' easy

F: 20' warm up + 5x6' @ subthreshold r: 1' + 10' cool down

S: long run (1:20-1:30)

S: free

Monday: 3 easy; 6 easy including strides

Tuesday: 3 easy; 1.5 warmup, 2000, 6x1000, 2000 tempo (5:05 pace / mile) all off 1:00 rest, cooldown to 13 on the day

Wednesday: recovery 6

Thursday: 3 easy; 5.5 easy including strides

Friday: 3 easy; 1.5 warmup, 4x mile 5:10 - 5:05 off 1:00, 0.5 mile jog, 5x300 at 1500 effort, last one slightly faster (~800 effort). 44.3 average for first 300s, windy 41.7 for the last one. Walk across the track rest and then a tiny bit more - about 2:15-2:30. Mile cooldown

Saturday: recovery hour

Sunday: long 13 (6:50, not 100% flat but mostly flat. Felt poor - heat)

Happy with the 2 main workouts. Long run wasn’t great but running 44s felt like a complete jog and I was definitely holding a good amount back. Also happy with how comfortable low 5:0x pace is becoming as tempo

Man up and do an actual tempo at some point. Why is every workout intervals? Are your races going to be broken into chunks?

You mean like Jakob does his threshold as continuous tempos?

What is goal racing season? Are you going to try to keep this going through to next spring? If so, I hope those paces are very relaxed for you.

Hi. It's good to keep up the quality workouts all year around. Don't listen to the talk of needing a higher easy mileage base build period during summer. But you seem to not know what best paces for you to use in your workouts.What you are doing is what I use to call " a guessing schedule".You need a program that guaranteed lead to your goals where you parallell in your training weeks both build the base and sharpen up at the same time.This is the modern way to train and get you to your individual possible limits on relatively low volume needed.

The Wizard 🇸🇪🧙🏼‍♂️🇸🇪

.....I just add this. If it's true you say you could run that 5x 300s at 44,3 average ( last 41,7) and it felt easy " like a jog" I must say you have quite good talent. You just need a smart effective training method to take you to your optimal possible race results.And I would advice you to cut your longest run to 10 miles.You don't need longer than that for the moment. Good luck!

Coach J.S 🧙🏼‍♂️🇸🇪

What are your current 3k/5k/10k PBs? Or maybe a better question, what were your PBs from the past spring? 5:0x pace may “feel” comfortable, but unless you’re in sub-14:25 shape, those paces are too fast.

drop the long run and the fast intervals. keep the tempos and the speed. add more easy volume and try to get two lighter tempos through the week, think 5x2k @ marathon pace on 1min rest and 10x1k @ half marathon pace, also on 1min rest. these will feel easier than you think they should, but these are what’s going to continue your high aerobic development without peaking or introducing anything anaerobic.