Fitness Motivation Tracker: The Training Should you do for a 10km Race

To answer the question of how much training you should do for a 10k race you first of all have to ask yourself what kind of race time to you want to achieve? This question needs to be coupled with how much time you have available to train as the more time you have to train properly the quicker your race time will be!

For the purposes of this blog post I am going to assume that you have time to train three times per week and this, if you train regularly and correctly, should get you a race-time of between 45-55 mins depending on your base level of fitness.

Vary Training Exercises

In one of my previous blog posts How to Train for a Half Marathon I emphasised the importance of mixing up your training with hills, speed and endurance work and the basics of training for a 10k race are not much different in theory.

The main difference, of course, is that you don’t have to run so far on the day and in your training; so your hill interval sessions are more like sprints uphill and your longest training run doesn’t need to be more than 7-8miles.

Eight Week Schedule

For this training schedule I am going to give you an eight-week training programme for your 10k and I have included a sample training schedule which you can follow for the first four weeks.

If you feel that your fitness levels are not quite ready for this 8 week programme then you can spend 3-4 weeks increasing your fitness by running 2-3 times a week with slow, steady runs of whatever you can do in order to prepare for this training programme:

Week 1

Interval Session: 800mtrs x 6 aiming for the same time for every 800mtrs with 90 secs recovery

Hill Session: 40-45 secs steep hill x 10 aiming for the same time every time with 60secs recovery

Steady Run: 4 miles fairly flat in 32-36 mins (make sure you warm up properly)

Week 2

Interval Session: 400mtrs x 8 aiming for the same time for every 400mtrs with 60 secs recovery

Hill Session: 40-45secs steep hill x 10 aiming for the same time every time with 60 secs recovery

Steady Run: 5 miles fairly flat in 40-45mins (make sure you warm up properly)

Week 3

Interval Sessions: 200mtrs x 10 aiming for the same time every time with 30secs recovery

Hill Session: 40-45secs steep hill x 10 aiming for the same time every time with 60secs recovery

Steady Run: 5 miles fairly flat in 40-45 mins (make sure you warm up properly)

Week 4

Interval Session: 800m/600m/400m/200m/400m/600m/800m with a 60sec recovery in between each one

Hill Session: 40-45 secs steep hill x 10 aiming for the same time every time with 60secs recovery

Steady Run: 6 miles fairly flat in 48-54mins (make sure you warm up properly)

Warm Up

Make sure that you warm up correctly especially on the days you’re doing hills or intervals in order to avoid injury. You can view my running warm-up drills video here. This warm up drill only takes a few minutes to do and it will help you avoid injury as you go through your training programme.

So, that’s the first four weeks of your eight week training schedule for a 10k and next week I will give you your second four week schedule where things will be getting a little tougher in order to get you round your 10k race in record time!

In the first post on this subject we looked at how important it is to vary your training runs by including Interval runs, Hill sessions and long, steady runs in order to achieve a good time for your 10km race.

By following our first four-week schedule you would have got used to taking on some short, sharp hill sprints as well as some tough interval sessions. The longer runs in the first weeks have been fairly flat, aiming for quick times over 4-6 miles, and the interval sessions have also been over short distances, which is all about to change!

Remember that we are looking at an actual race time of 45-55mins with this training schedule.

So, let’s get straight into the final four weeks of training

Week 5

Interval Session: 6 x 800mtrs aiming for the same time for every 800mtrs but all quicker than in week 1. 90secs recovery

Speed Session: 6k fairly flat “sprint” at faster than predicted race pace so you are aiming for sub 30mins

Steady Run: 7 miles at race pace with lots of hills on your route

Week 6

Interval Session: 10 x 400mtrs aiming for the same time every 400mtrs but all quicker than in week 2. 60 secs recovery

Speed Session: 6k fairly flat sprint at faster than predicted race pace aiming for sub 30mins

Steady Run : 8miles at race pace with lots of hills on your route

Week 7

2 x steady runs of 7-8 miles at race pace with a few hills on your route

1 x steady run of 5-6 miles fairly flat

Week 8

2 x steady, easy flat runs early in the week of no more than 4 miles and no training from 3 days before the race itself.

You will notice that we stop the speed and interval sessions 2 weeks out from the start of the race as any speed gains in this period before the race will be minimal and the steady runs are gradually reducing in distance and “hillyness” as well. The idea is that all your really hard work is completed 10-14 days before the race and in this final period you are just keeping fit for the race day; ensuring that come the day you are fresh and raring to go.