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Coach Crowe's Monthly Workout Posted on June 26, 2014

This month’s workout is a college workout I have adapted for the high school 5K runner.  I have seen many versions of this workout and I will outline them as I describe it.  This is a great early season workout and can be run later in the season as a measure of fitness. 

The basic outline of the workout is: Warm up- 1 mile- tempo run- 1 mile. I have my athletes run the first mile at their current 5K pace, go immediately into a two mile tempo run at one minute and thirty seconds slower than their current 5K pace, then run the last one mile faster than the first mile.  This is a good example of a multi- pace workout teaching our runners to make pace adjustments as a race dictates.  We are also forcing the body to recruit different muscle fibers causing adaptation of fast twitch to hybrid slow twitch fibers. 

This workout can have many manifestations; I first encountered it as a workout for the college 10K.  The first mile run at current 5K pace, a four mile tempo run at 10K pace, and then an all-out mile.  I have also seen it described as the first mile run at 3200 meter pace, two mile tempo at 10K pace, and last mile at 1600 meter pace. 

Whatever way you chose to run this workout it is a great gauge of fitness.  Adding a second bout later in the season has a nice effect.  Most athletes are amazed at how fast they run the last mile given the body of work beforehand, a nice confidence booster two weeks out from a key race.

*Coach Crowe is a freelance blogger for the More Miles More Smiles team.*