Newbie prepping for a killer 10k

[phobos28km]

Howdy all,

 

I am a newbie, and have no idea if I am posting this in the right place. I have a 10k race on May 3rd that I am prepping for. I ran my first marathon on the March 15th, but have to retrain myself for shorter hill runs. The race is up a fire road to the top of a small hill, and back with an average incline of 10%. Here is the race I am running:

 

http://www.runtheverdugos.com/

 

My training schedule is attached. When I trained for the marathon, I mostly did flat running on the treadmill, or would do long runs on the beach which was easy breezy flat. All of the training runs are going to be at some kind of incline, but I am gonna do 5 miles as soon as I finish this post to see how it feels. Wish me luck, and if anybody has advice on hill training let me know!

 

M

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Salivanth]

Wow, that seems hardcore. Are you doing your practice runs on a similar course? I'm a beginner runner myself, but common sense would suggest that if you're already an experienced runner and only have a few weeks to train, the ideal method would be to train conditions as similar to the race as possible.

[phobos28km]

I am thinking about trying the course out over the next couple of weekends, but I can't do it regularly since its a bit far from my house. The problem is that nothing near me is really as hard as the course, 10 % incline is horrible!

[Salivanth]

I am thinking about trying the course out over the next couple of weekends, but I can't do it regularly since its a bit far from my house. The problem is that nothing near me is really as hard as the course, 10 % incline is horrible!

Yeah, that does sound pretty hard to find. From what I've read, running tends to follow a schedule where runs are either easy, long, or quality. Only the quality runs (Done 1-3 times a week depending on intensity of schedule, realistically 1-2 for most of us) should be hard ones. So if you can do the course once per week, that's still fine. Running on that course for every session would be way too much. Maybe you could do one hard course session (including both uphill and downhill running, since both are necessary to train) one milder hill session (Alternating uphill/downhill, or just making sure that any hill you run up, you run down as well), one long run (currently Saturday's run), and one recovery run each week?

 

[phobos28km]

yea that good advice. I usually run on the treadmill, since it's hard for me to schedule runs while it's still light out because of my infant son. You're right about running some down hills, so maybe I should start doing more runs outside!