2025/2026 Winter Update: Part 1
Starting this winter, I needed to re-dedicate myself to structured training. Nothing too complicated. In the words of the great Frank Shorter -
That's basically the bones of my training. Structure, consistency, and a little math. I want to use this framework for the rest of 2026, adjusting the kinds of efforts I'll be doing, depending on the race I'm training for. Following up on my last post, the first task is to sharpen up my 5K. Sorry Frank Shorter, I'll do the 2 hour long runs, but with all due respect I'll be nowhere near 20 miles after 2 hours.“Two hard interval sessions a week and one long run – 20 miles or two hours, whichever comes first. Every other run is aerobic, and you do as much of that for volume as you can handle. Do this for two or three years, and you’ll get good”
5K Time Trial Prep
After recovering from my Marathon, I hit the roads again with an eye to do a mini 8 week training block with a time trial sometime near the end of the year. I didn't know what the weather was going to look like, so I had to get into shape after maybe 6 weeks then dial in the exact date once I got into middle of December. I finally settled on December 26th. In general here was my workout routine:
- Tuesday: 5-6 x 4 minute repeats at ~ LT2 (or for me the equivalent of 4:15 min/km) with 2 minutes rest
- Thursday or Friday: 20-25 minute tempo runs at around 4:30 min/km pace with 15ish minute warm up and 15ish minute cooldown.
- Sundays: Still my long runs, but I'd throw down some 400m repeats. Probably around 8-10 laps with about a minute of rest between reps. Each lap had to be 94 seconds in order to slide right underneath 4:00 min/km pace. After the track work, I'd finish off with some easy running back home. My long runs were still 15-20 km.
- Mondays I rested. no running no lifting no nothing.
- Every other day was super easy pace
The 5K Time Trial
Time to test the work. My goal was to hit even splits for as long I could. That means that I needed to be in the ballpark of 96-second laps in order to have a fighting chance of getting a sub 20 by lap 10. The last 2.5 laps I'd try to hang on for dear life.
First few laps, I was bang on. I'd hit 96ish seconds and call it good. It was hard to track exact times since my Apple Watch does not have physical lap button so I had use the touch screen to start new laps. So I'd be accurate by about a second or so but couldn't count on anything better than that.
I felt good and as long as I kept this up, I was going to do ok. However, by lap 8 or about 2/3 of the way in, I noticed that the one or two second drift per lap was starting to compound. I was no longer just a few seconds off pace, I was close to 10 seconds off pace. So with 800 meters to go, I kicked and pushed as hard as I could to claw that time back. I wanted to back off with about 400 meters to go, but when was I going to have another chance at doing this? (edit: I mean it was a time trial, so I could do this almost any time. But I think mentally, I didn't want to push this back any further and interfere with marathon training season) The moment was never going to get easier than this so I pushed through until my watch beeped at me, telling me I crossed the 5 km marker. I kept cruising through and stopped the watch after another 50 meters because, you know, I wasn't going to get a potential PR stolen by the Strava Tax.
My final result? 19:49. I finally got a sub-20 5k and I got it by an undeniable margin. I'm really satisfied with the work I had put in during the winter months.
Lessons Learned
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Track work pays off. Still not my favorite thing to do, but a little goes a long way. Doing 400m or 800m repeats taught me to how to regulate my pace. It gave me a feeling to aim for when doing my time trial.
Threshold work is also super valuable. Scientifically its supposed to teach your body how to clear the acid buildup in your blood stream and blah blah blah. For me its about pushing my limits of discomfort and seeing how long I can stay on the "knife's edge" without going over and blowing up. If work on the track taught me speed, threshold work taught me how to hang on for just a little while longer. Most people can hold threshold effort for just about an hour. Pushing up my threshold fitness meant making it easier to hang on to 5k pace.
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Tempo runs are also great. Don't get it mixed up with threshold! They are very similar except that Thresholds have a very specific definition. Where as thresholds are the effort where your bloodstream is clearing out acid just at the same rate as your body produces it, a tempo run is more of a "hey yo, this is getting uncomfortable" vibe. Some workouts I tried to hit that threshold in order to push it up. Other workouts I'd run for longer but at a slightly lower pace in order to gain a different adaptation.
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The workout days were hard. Like really hard. But I got them done knowing that the next day I could rest or go really easy. But that's exactly how its supposed to go. Go too hard on hard days and you risk getting injured. Go too easy on hard days and you're leaving gains on the table. Go too hard on the easy days and now you're not as recovered and can't go as hard on the hard days. And lastly, its almost impossible to go too easy on easy days. There is wisdom in understanding the purpose of all the different kinds of workouts.
Coming up in Part 2: translating all of this into a half marathon. What was the plan? How did it go?
