From Better than Yesterday, Cool Running forums

posted Feb-22-2007 10:40 AM

I’ll offer another type of tempo run which works for me, YMMV.

A good first stab at a tempo run is to take your personal best 5k race pace (or make an estimate at your pace for a 5k race if you’ve yet to run your first 5k race) and add about 15 to 30 seconds per mile, then run that pace for about 20:00.

So let’s say you’ve run one 5k race this year, and it was 31:00 even, from the starting line (not the starting gun) to the finish line. OK, maybe your pacing was all over the place due to going out too fast, walking parts of it, etc. Doesn’t matter. Take 10:00 as your average pace, and add 15 to 30 seconds to make 10:15 – 10:30. Warm up with a mile of very easy running/walking, then run 2 miles or so at 10:15 – 10:30 pace. Preferably, start at the slower end and pick up the pace over mile 2. Don’t sprint to finish – just keep a pretty even tempo. The effort during the 20:00 should feel a little easier than a 5k race, but it should be a challenge – enough so that you won’t want to do another workout like that for another week or even two weeks. Don’t forget to cool down afterwards with a final mile or two. In other words, if the thought of running 5 miles, with 2 miles at a pace approaching your race pace, is too much for you, you’re probably not physically ready yet for speed training.

The purposes of this type of workout are manifold, but they primarily helped me to learn to run at an even pace approaching 5k race pace for a period appraching 40:00. An unexpected result was that I surprised myself with a 10k race that was paced just a little slower than my best 5k race.

If you are able to run at that pace for the full 2 miles (or 20:00, which is the actual target), try running at that pace for 25:00 in a week or two. No faster, unless you’ve really improved upon your condition in the time since you raced that 5k.

Work up to about 40:00 over the course of a couple of months.