Help required

[Wagper08]

HiNot sure if this is the right group. Gave myself a new year challenge to run 10k in 2024. Started an app couch to 10k and only have 3 weeks left and still only managing 5k. Any advice?

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate10]

Welcome to Bridge! You’re absolutely in the right place. I don’t know that app-do you run by time or distance? Is it that you’re meant to be doing longer runs and you’re running out of puff or that your timed runs aren’t covering as much distance as the app thinks you should be? Knowing a bit more about how your running would be helpful.

First of all, none of the runs you’ve done are wasted and you don’t need to feel like you’ve failed to hit 10k. You’ve built up to 5k and that’s still a great achievement. Following that plan will have increased your fitness. That’s a great thing.

Do you have an event in 3 weeks or is that just when the app plan ends? Not all plans suit everyone. They’re always just a suggestion that you can adapt to your own fitness. In your position, I might be looking for another plan that suited better and gave me a “fresh start” feeling rather than being down on myself for how the other plan was going. That’s just me though! There are some popular plans here-the magic plan (in the pinned posts) and the Nike Run Club 10k app plan are two that pop up a lot. I’ve done them both and they’ve worked well for me.

I’m sure you can get to 10k in time-it just might be a case of tweaking your timescale and perhaps what your runs look like.

[Wagper08 in reply to MissUnderstanding]

Thanks for all your help. The app is time based so even though I go out for 40min it says I should have done 6k but I have only done 5k. The plan is only for another 3 weeks and then it assumes you have achieved the 10k. Have looked at nike run but struggle to do 3 times a week so not sure how it will work.

Also lost a bit of confidence as recently had runners tum and worried it will happen again 😔

[Cmoi Graduate10 in reply to Wagper08]

6k in 40 minutes is an average 6:40/km pace (9kph.) Unless you set that target in the app, it's meaningless. Not achieving it doesn't mean you can't run 10k.

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate10 in reply to Wagper08]

Running 5k is 40 minutes is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. If you go on your local parkrun results page, I bet you’ll find lots of others doing just that.

Have a look at the Magic Plan here…

healthunlocked.com/bridgeto...

It’s two plans in one-time or distance. If you look at the times in green, week two has a long run of 39 minutes. You could pick up that plan from week 3 so next week you’d do three runs: 15mins, 30mins and 44mins. How far you go doesn’t matter. You’ll only be focussed on time. That plan takes you to 60 minutes running. Then, see how far you’re going in 60 minutes and switch to the distance based plan. Or you could follow the distance based version from week 1 where the longest run is 5.5km. Totally up to you!

The Nike Run Club plan looks intimidating with 5 runs a week, but I don’t know anyone who has actually followed it like that. Most choose three runs a week (a faster one, a medium one and the long one) or make a week last longer than a week doing all the runs woth rest days in between. The benefit of the Nike all over yours is it used GPS to measure the distance runs so they take as long as you take to hit the distance. This plan will have you running at different paces which is a bonus if you’re up for that.

Either of those (or pretty much any other plan you can adapt to fit you!) will get you to 10k. You could even just add a couple of minutes to one run each week and that would work too.

Sorry about the runner's tum! The more you run, the more confident you’ll feel about it not happening again. It’s not a nice feeling but it’ll pass 🤞

Good luck with your next run!

[Kirst13 Graduate10 in reply to Wagper08]

Lots of good advice about the running given already. I get runners trots and a search on here for runners trots will bring up some good advice and links that I found really helpful. For me, personally, cutting coffee down to a fortnightly treat and doing short runs on an empty stomach or just a jam sandwich before a longer run has also helped. I think it's individual though, so a search on here and trying some of the advice will hopefully help you.

[TheAce in reply to MissUnderstanding]

See MissUnderstanding, there is a Couch to 10K, I knew I wasnt dreaming!! 😀 I'm going to go with yours and Cmoi suggestions though! 👍

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate10 in reply to TheAce]

is It this one? It hasn’t got any link with Couch to 5k! That what confused me! Good luck with your plans! Looking forward to hearing how you get on!

Couch to 10k app

[Wagper08 in reply to MissUnderstanding]

Yes that's the one.

[Cmoi Graduate10]

MissUnderstanding has already given great advice, particularly about being flexible re plans. After all, you still have over eight months left in which to achieve your goal of running 10K in 2024. Plenty of time to rejig things!

[Beachcomber66 Graduate10]

The classic way to build up distance is to adopt a three run per week pattern and vary the pace. A short run, which is the quickest run of the week, followed by a steady paced longer middle run and then the run in which you are trying to build up distance is a really slow run. Trying to build up distance on every run, or trying to build up running time on every run, is likely to lead to frustration. That is what I found!

Just by way of example, on Monday I am due to run 10 miles (or 16.1 kilometres) as I build back up to HM; my other two runs this week are a steady 35 minute recovery run and a quicker intervals run of 38 minutes. The 10 mile run will be as slow as I ever run….maybe 7:30 mins/ k. You could try following that three run pattern (see the magic plan on this page) even if you only manage two runs over week…..just fit the pattern into, say nine days instead of seven if that is what all you can fit in. The main point is vary the pace so that the run on which you are seeking to increase distance is your slowest. I hope that makes sense. You can definitely do this.

[GTFC Graduate10 in reply to Beachcomber66]

Beachcomber66 👀 Go well my friend ⭐

[Jools2020 Graduate10]

I’ve been running 10Ks for the last few Saturdays - and I can’t run 6K in 40 minutes. Heck - right now I can’t even run 5K in 40 minutes 🤣

[Tessie66 Graduate10]

I'm fairly new to running 10k I've mainly do the nike running app but also do some running I want to do. Best advice I can give is think distance not time. Don't worry about times that will come go up 10% in distance each week if you can. I run 3 x a week parkrun Saturday long run Monday and hills or sprint's Wednesday. Good luck 👍