FLRC workouts for the week of June 1st

Group Runs & Workouts
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I hope everyone weathered last week’s heat OK! I’m trying some new things with some of this week’s workouts, so let me know what you think of them.

We have some newcomers to the forum this week, and if you’re just seeing these workouts for the first time, look at the bottom of this message for links for background, to the pace calculator, recommended warmup and cooldown, and so on. Also, don’t be shy about asking questions—I’m happy to explain anything that’s not clear.

Middle Distance Workouts (5K to 15K)

For our interval workout this week, I’m trying something new: speed progression, where you get faster throughout. This will be tough, since you’re tiring out as you go.

  • Workout 1: 3-4 sets of this combination: Start with 2 minutes at T pace (roughly 10K race pace), then go right into 1 minute of I pace (roughly 5K race pace), followed by 30 seconds of R pace (roughly 1 mile race pace). Rest for 4 minutes, and then repeat. In essence, this is 3.5 minutes of progression speed.

  • Workout 2: 4-6 reps of 5 minutes at T pace, with 3 minutes of jogging recovery between reps. We’re slowly increasing the T-pace distance each week, so if you’re focused more on the 5K than the 10K, for instance, or if your weekly mileage is on the low end, stick with the smaller number of reps.

  • Long Run: 25-30% of your weekly mileage at E (easy, such that you can hold a conversation) pace

Long Distance Workouts (Half Marathon to Marathon)

Back to our bread-and-butter M pace workout this week, but with a small twist.

  • Workout 1: After your 10-minute warmup, run 50 minutes at M (marathon race pace) effort, followed by another 10 minutes of E for your cooldown. For a challenge this week, try to run this workout on a course that’s not completely flat. (Sorry Black Diamond runners!) The goal is to maintain the M-pace effort even while the actual speed decreases and increases as you go up and down hills. Most races have some hills in them, so it’s important to flatten them out with training. (When I ran the New York Marathon in 2008, I giggled at the hills people were worried about, thanks to doing my training in hilly Ithaca.)

  • Long Run: 25-30% of your weekly mileage at E pace

Resources

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I took two down weeks to recover from donating blood and crazy on-call work hours, but now I’m back. My dog and I ran the 50 min M tempo today on the south side of Monkey Run - loosely interpreting “not completely flat” to mean trail as well as hills. It is always a bit discouraging to see how much slower my splits are on trail even though the miles took some effort and felt fast. but overall the workout was great (: Thanks Adam! I can definitely identify with your NYC Marathon experience - whenever I race in my hometown of Toronto, the hills there feel like a joke compared to Ithaca!

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Glad to hear you’re back—I was getting a little worried that you were hurt or something.

I don’t have experience with training after giving blood, but it stands to reason you’d want to take it easy for while.

Trail pace is always so much slower—I remember watching a movie about the Western States 100 and the winners were running something like 7-8 minute pace toward the end. My initial thought was, “That’s not that fast, I could do that.” And then I internalized the fact that they were doing after running 90 miles AND were on trails. Utter monsters…

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