Run Your Fastest 10k with These 7 Workouts

what are the best workouts that are going to train your body to run its fastest 10k ever I'm a professional Runner and earlier this year I r a 10K PB in 32 minutes and 32 seconds and today I'm going to give you seven 10K specific killer workouts that are going to get you 10k race ready this session is brutal okay it's going to test you mentally it's going to test you physically but trust me if you can nail this one you are ready to run a fast 10K and before I dive into the workouts as always when I give you these workout videos these should be done following a thorough warmup and followed by a thorough cool down treat your bodies well people and they'll treat you well back by not getting you injured and I also have to say please make sure that if you do these sessions they sit within a balanced week that includes lots of genuinely easy runs as well and some rest days and some running focused injury prevention strength and conditioning work that's it let's get in it let's just ignore the fact that my dishwasher is open and I haven't unloaded it yet you guys are more important okay I would rather film this video than attend to my dishes so first up we've got a simple but classic 20 to 25 * 400 m reps oh that's a lot of laps yes it is but it's also the same distance as a 10K if you opt for the 25 lap version and you're going to run these at your 10K goal Pace or a touch quicker now when I do this session I take between 50 and 60 seconds recovery which is roughly 65 to 80% of the time I'm actually running in the Reps roughly 78 seconds so I want you to use this formula rather than me saying to you take 50 to 60 seconds recovery because that wouldn't be fair if your reps are taking twice as long as mine are that's a much harder recovery ratio so if your 400s are run at 2 minutes and that's roughly your 10K Pace take around 90 seconds rest the goal with this workout is not to get faster into the Reps but to maintain the same Pace pretty much the whole way through you want to be consistent with your reps and also with your recoveries it's a classic lactate threshold session and the aim is to improve your ability to buffer or clear that lactate oh wait a minute what is lactate great question I'm glad you asked lactate is the stuff that builds up in your muscles as you run faster and your body can actually use it as fuel and it does but when you produce too much lactate your body's ability to clear that lactate is hindered which then slows you down as it accumulates in your muscles now I'm a big believer of active recovery in these rest periods I don't mind if you're doing a super easy jog or if you're walking just to keep moving just don't stand still because you will actually recover quicker by moving around so uh when should I do this session in my 10K training block great question I would say do this one 6 to 8 weeks out from a goal 10K race and as you get fitter you can do this one again but aiming to take the much shorter end of that 65 to 80% recovery range it's a belter guys enjoy session number two is a cracker it's a varied speed workout and it's going to be one that's best done on the track now I need to go to the gym and do another run today so I'm going to get changed and talk to you about it on my way there okay so just just hold that thought okay so that varied speed workout then it's best done on the track so that it can help you with your pacing being even and so that you can get the distances right and it's three sets of 1K 800 M 600 M 400 m that's 8.4k total effort volume so it's less than 10K volume so it must be easier than running a 10K right well no because a good chunk of this workout is done at sub goal 10k race Pace why oh my God these steps are going to kill me walking uphill or steps at altitude it's really hard why why is a lot of this run at sub 10k race Pace if you're trying to run a fast 10K because running faster than your goal pace and improving your times over the 5K and the shorter distances your top end speed is really going to help your 10K time it'll help your half marathon time it'll help your marathon time because making your higher end speed faster shifts everything along to the right so the 1ks the first rep of each set is going to be run at Gold whole 10k race pace and then every rep after that is going to get progressively faster so the 800 M reps they're just a smidge faster than 10k race Pace by the time you get to the 600 M reps ideally you'll be running around your 5K goal race pace and the 400 m faster than that everything's off a 200 M easy Dr recovery in between the Reps and then in between the sets 400 m easy drug recovery which is very generous and I'd probably say aim to do this one maybe 5 to 6 weeks out from a 10k race it's a good test of your speed but it does have those nice recoveries and it's not quite 10K in volume so there's some harder sessions for you yet I need to be careful because my track record with filming and talking not so good I've rolled my ankle a few times oh that was my ankle so I just need to check myself and concentrate on what I'm doing whilst also giving you the third session now this is another absolute classic it's 10 by a k all right I tend to take 60 seconds recovery between these and they're taking me 3 minutes and something in the low 3 minutes so again if you're targeting a 40 minute 10K or a 50-minute 10K your 1K reps at 10k race case I'm going to be a bit slower so it would be unfair for you to just take 60 seconds recovery so for this one I'm going to say take roughly a third of the time that it's taking you to do your 10K paste 1K reps and take that as your recovery cuz give or take that's what I'm doing so for real ease here if you're targeting a 45 minute 10K your 1ks are going to be 4 and 1/2 minutes so third of that is 90 seconds so that's your recovery and if you were targeting a 60-minute 10K your reps would be 6 minutes and a third of that is 2 minutes so that's what you take as your recovery I'm actually going to walk on this section because it just looks a little bit sketchy we don't need to be rolling ankles today and this is such a classic all you need to do is run 10 by a k at your goal race Pace as evens as you can we're not really aiming to pick it up as we go through and this one is great for testing how realistic your race pace is so doing it as your kind of last hard workout maybe 2 weeks out from a 10K or or 3 weeks out if you want to still get another good workout in and if you can run those in even splits at your goal Pace I'd say you're pretty good to go to Target that in the race [Music] itself all right I'm not sleeping on you guys this is another really tough one okay 3 * 2 miles hard and this is one that's a step up from another Classic 10k session which is 5 to 6 by a mile because they're they're two mile reps is twice as long what nah I never knew that and I won't lie to you it's a bit of of a gut Buster so those those two M reps they're at goal 10k race pace so not for the faint-hearted it's a tough session but you like tough sessions right that's why you came here right so when I do this session I take between 2 to 3 minutes recovery and that's a very light jog or even a walk for the first sort of 50 m if I need to take between 2 to 3 minutes of recovery if your target 10K pace is 45 minutes or faster if you're targeting a 45 plus minute 10K take 3 to 4 minutes and just give yourself Grace to sit where it feels right within that recovery window obviously if you're bang on 45 minutes also give yourself Grace to be closer to 3 minutes than two or take 3 and a half if you want to cuz you're kind of on the cut off and if this one sounds a little bit scary that is okay it kind of is so what you can do to make this one a little bit gentler for the first try is going for 3 * 1.5 mil or 2 * 2 miles for just a little bit of a gentler version and this is another great one for testing whether you're race pace is realistic so doing it roughly 2 to 3 weeks out from your goal 10K and top tip get some company to help you someone pacing you someone on the bike it's going to make it a lot easier to get through now I don't know if you can tell but I have actually cleaned my entire apartment tidied everything cleaned the floors put everything away and well if you didn't notice I just wanted to let you know because go me look at me being an adult now obviously no single workout is going to make you have the race of your life okay consistent training making sure that you're staying injuryf free doing all of your gym work your strength and conditioning that preventative stuff making sure that you're recovering well fueling yourself properly doing all of those little 1% on top of a few sort of good workouts is what's going to make you fitter and faster over time having said that this one's one of my favorites and I think you should give it a go it's lactate threshold time based reps okay so we're not measuring distances we're going to time why because it makes you let go of pace just that little bit cuz You' not got to focus on hitting a mile in this certain split or hitting a K in this certain split it's about running for a fixed period of time in the right Zone and you've got options for this one okay I'm giving you a little bit of wiggle room to tailor this one to you it's five sets of 3 to 6 minutes at your threshold pace of 75 seconds recovery so if you take the 3 minute version 5 * 3 minutes of 75 seconds it's quite a nice taper session if you ask me maybe a good one to do 5 to 7 days out from a race because it's less volume so it's good for the taper and then you could do 5x 4 minutes 5x 5 minutes all the way up to 5 * 6 minutes which would be 30 minutes volume yay me for doing some maths now 75 seconds is on the shorter end of recoveries but that's because this should be comfortably uncomfortable if you're running at the right pace so if you're running these at your true threshold Pace you you shouldn't be tipping over into the oh my God I literally can't go any further this session has ruined me kind of territory so what that means is you're running in the zone whereby your body is able to use lactate as a fuel at the same rate that your body is producing lactate from you working hard yes science we're aiming to sit in that little sweet spot it's really hard for me to give you an exact formula or to say this is how you find your absolute threshold Pace because the most accurate way to do that is by testing it in a lab or doing a field test and someone literally measuring the lactate concentration in your blood but you can get a pretty good estimation by using a recent race performance and putting it into a good calculator like the McMillan running one which I will link in the description below which will give you your estimated threshold pace for a session like this one and I guess to give you a little bit of context when I put my recent 10K time into McMillan running it tells me that my lactate threshold pace is 52 3 minute Ming which is roughly 10 to 15 seconds slower than my 10k race pace and I run my lactate threshold sessions at between 520 and 525 minute Ming so it's pretty bang on but depending on your experience and the speed that you're running your 10K your lactate threshold Pace might be further away from your 10K Pace or closer to your 10K Pace I'm going to say that this session is a pretty good allrounder I tend to have one kind of threshold focused workout in my week every week so make mix it up play around with the length of these reps and use it throughout your plan if you like it just to break the fourth wall quickly for you this is my amazing filming setup that I've been using because that suitcase gets it just the right height and the lighting there is perfect and I'm using this mirror to make sure I can see myself because I'm filming on a phone out here because it's basically as good as the uh second camera we have and Daniel's using the Sony how rude how very rude uh anyway session number six session number six you're going to love this one if you love your weekend long runs it's a progression long run now I like to do these for runs of between 10 to 16 mi in distance or 16 to 26 km but you can definitely do shorter if that sounds a little bit daunting and you really really don't need to be doing the longer end of this because remember I'm a 10K to Marathon gal so I'm a bit biased towards the longer distances it's kind of my jam and this one sounds super simple but it can be harder to nail and get right depending on how confident you feel on your kind of internal Pace clock how much you rely on the watch and how naturally that kind of massage of gradually picking up your pace comes to you it's a little bit of a practice makes perfect kind of deal so take the first 2 to three miles or four to 5K easy at your usual easy conversational pace and then you're going to gradually and I mean gradually mile by mile people K byk ease things down throughout the run the goal of this workout is to have a straa grow graph to die for at the end okay that's literally it nothing physiological no training benefit no Fitness no it's the straa graph okay that's what's important so you're gradually easting it down it's like a massage we're easing into it and then by those last 2 miles or 3K you want to be sitting just a scratch slower than your threshold pace and I'll warn you okay it should kind of suck by the end you should be wanting it to end it's it's kind of it's hard but if someone were to ask you can you keep going for another 5 minutes you want to be able to say yes so it's not a you're laying down on the floor completely beached deceased after finishing it kind of session if you do that you've overcooked it a little bit and this one is another one that's great kind of all Block Round within reason I'd say stay away from it really early on in a training block if you're kind of not as fit as you have been in the past cuz it's going to be tough maybe just dial it down a little bit if you do that and I'd say stay away from it as well right at the end quite close to your 10K in your taper because you can get a little bit of residual fatigue left over after a long run like this but it's really good for people who perhaps have a busy life in the week and haven't got time to fit in a second session or even a session at all cuz you can hit two birds with one stone by doing your long run and a workout literally at the same time at the weekend now I thought about giving you another classic for this last one with five or even six by a mile but I thought you know what we've had enough classics I think I'm ready to give you something really really hard instead I mean 5 by mile is a hard session but this one's really hard this session is brutal okay it's going to test you mentally it's going to test you physically but trust me if you can nail this one you are ready to run a fast 10K and before I give you this session I heard a rumor that if you subscribe to my channel which is Free by the way it's a free way to support the channel it increases the chances of this session going well so it's worth a try and we also have a really lofty goal of hitting 100K subscribers this year which Daniel has told me would mean we have to gain 5K Subs a month which we've only ever done once and that was last month so we're on a good track but it's kind of a really hard scary goal that we probably won't reach but we could do it with your help okay I'm going to give it to you it's a pyramid but it's a really really nasty one so from the bottom up 400 800 1200 1,600 and then we go back down 1,600 1 1200 800 400 and then you get a bonus 400 on the end too which I'll talk about separately isn't that nice an extra rep so it's 88.4k total effort volume Paces well the 1600's are going to be at your goal 10k race pace so basically everything shorter than that needs to be faster than 10k race pace so if your 1600s are at 10K race Pace the 1200s are going to be a smidge quicker somewhere between 5K and 10K race pays the 800s are going to be at 5K race pay Pace goal race Pace kind of fast and then the 400's faster than that so like really fast and that doesn't include the bonus 400 hold on for that one recoveries throughout the whole session are a 200 M easy Jog and if you absolutely nail this one your splits for the second half so that second 1600 coming back down are going to be a smidge quicker than on the way up okay we're aiming to negative split the session only a little bit not like huge gaps cuz 10K goal race pace for the first one 10 go race pce for the second one but just a little bit quicker now negative splitting in a race and in a workout is really hard so don't be hard on yourself if you don't nail this one on your first go oh and uh that bonus 400 you Lucky Soul it's uh it's a windup rep what does that mean it means start out at about 5k race pace and then get quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker each 100 m you're aiming to just turn it up a gear turn it up a gear turn up volume go up a gear get faster so in that last 100 m you're fighting against an imaginary competitor on that home stretch of your fast 10K it's eyeballs out okay it's a good fun one but oh how it hurts and this is another really testing one so keep it for two to three plus weeks pre-race um cuz it's going to stink baby please let me know if you try any of these sessions I would love to hear how they go and if you enjoy en this video and you've got a half marathon coming up instead of a 10K go and check this video out instead guys I almost forgot love the grind [Music]