Training for runs shorter than 5k

[pianoteacher]

With my half marathon out of the way I intend to move on to concentrating on speeding up my middle distance running. Specifically 2k (Army Selection run - not imminent as I'm still waiting on a medical waiver) and the mile (for an adult/child relay with my son in August). My son is also hopefully going to do the 1500m and 3000m for part of his GCSE PE practical and I thought we could do some training together.

Has anyone trained for middle distance? Is it any different from training for 5k?

I have it somewhere in my mind that UnfitNoMore was previously a 3000m runner but I may have dreamt that 🤣

[UnfitNoMore Metric Marathon]

In a previous life 😂. 30 years ago. The balance changes, for distance work lots of slow recovery runs are the way to get miles in the legs with a little speed/tempo work in there... this you already know. 3k as a track event is basically run slightly anaerobic, so lots more sprint interval sessions and hard paced 800m intervals were the order of the day to build fast twitch muscle fibre and lactic acid tolerance... the latter hurts a bit. 1500m would bring the balance further towards speed, and by the time you get to 400m the distance work has to go... sprinters aren’t allowed to run 1km. 3k being at the upper limit of middle distance isn’t that much removed from 5k, keep the long run down and introduce an extra pace based run into a cycle of runs. I never ran 5k as a kid doing 3k, but I’d assume that the elite guys do as that’s where Mo and Eliud started, there’s a video of them competing in a 3k on YouTube.

For the purposes of the army selection run I just had a look... para’s need to cover 2.4k in 9:40 signals in 14:00 with other regiments in between. As you’ve trained for HM you’d be able to run 1k much quicker than your long run pace for sure... have you tried this?

[pianoteacher Marathon Half Marathon in reply to UnfitNoMore]

Haha! I didn't dream it 😂🤣

Will be going in as a Musician so the time is very conservative. The tests go metric from April so the old mile and a half run (2.4km) is reduced to 2km and the time adjusted accordingly. I have to do it in less than 11:15 which is no problem - I just want to train to do it as quickly as possible. Hoping that will end up being somewhere between 9 and 10 mins 🤞Want to get the mile down to the same sort of pace. According to my Garmin my fastest mile is 7:22 but I think that either incorrectly registered during a track interval session or when I was running downhill 🤣 Realistically I think I'm around an 8 min mile at the moment.

I'm going to have a go at running 2km as fast as possible tomorrow to set myself a baseline to work from and then look to do speedwork on a Monday. I run with a club on a Wed and Fri and parkrun pretty much every Saturday - do you think it's possible to incorporate some speedwork into those runs just by pushing myself faster at appropriate points or does it need to be more formalised than that?

[UnfitNoMore Metric Marathon in reply to pianoteacher]

We’re aiming at a time here, they’re not taking the first 3 of 8 runners, so it shouldn’t take much work on speed... and an 8 minute mile is already close. See where you’re at first for sure. Parkrun will keep that endurance up... maybe Monday do 1km x 3/4 with two minute recoveries... go about 8/10 effort, it’s never a sprint... if you get to 9/10 effort with some left in the tank you’ll be there I think.

[pianoteacher Marathon Half Marathon in reply to UnfitNoMore]

Brilliant - thank you! I'll give the 1km reps a go x

[Whatsapp Half Marathon]

I dont have UnfitNoMore 's experience, but for speedwork I recently revisied C25K and used the runs as sprints and the walks as recovery runs. So for W1 I get 8 x 60sec sprint with 90secs recovery runs between. As I get more used to it I will move up to using W2 and so on.

I would like to say its my idea, but I read it on here first.

[pianoteacher Marathon Half Marathon in reply to Whatsapp]

I've heard of people using couch for speedwork. How are you getting on with it?

I've never tried it because I think the 60 secs reps would be too short for me. I was advised not to sprint after I injured myself last October so am looking at longer reps where I'm not tempted to run flat out - I get a bit over excited if I've got 250m or less to run 🤣

Tried 3 x 1km reps this morning which was hard but meant I couldn't sprint. Someone from my club suggested 6 x 400m so I might give that a go - if I can resist the temptation to go at it like a loon 😁