CHAPTER NINE

Racing 10k on the Road

This is the most popular racing distance, but of course the schedules would work equally well for running any distance from 5k to 12k (three to eight miles). If you have been following the ‘full fitness’ programme you will be able to cope with a 10k race, but you won’t have reached your full potential. This chapter really takes over from where Chapter 7 leaves off.

In the ‘full fitness’ programme we are recommending running four times a week, totalling about 22 miles (35 km) a week. A 50% increase in volume, running six times a week for a total of 33–35 miles, can easily be fitted in with the working week and will enable one to run close to one’s best for distances of 8–10k (5–6 miles).

For the first few weeks, build up to 30 miles a week by increasing the number of sessions to five or six a week. Once your body can cope with this, bring in the quality sessions.

Bruce’s basic 10k schedule

Week 1

Week 2

Age allowances

Over-55: aim for only one hard session a week, plus one long run, but have one rest day and one non-running day, e.g. cycling, swimming or gym work.

‘Serious’ 10000m schedule

The following schedule is a step up on the one above. It has a sufficiently large endurance element to cope with races from five miles up to ten miles.

Week 1: 36–38 miles

Week 2: 36–40 miles

Week 3: 45 miles approx.

Week 4: 40–45 miles

Week 5: 45–48 miles

Week 6: 40–45 miles

Week 7: 50 miles approx.

Week 8 (pre-race special week): 40 miles approx.

Allowances for age

Over-50: not more than 2 hard runs per week, allow one day complete rest. Over-60: Not more than one hard run per week, allow one day for rest and one day for non-running activities.

Mike Hager in the European Vets 10k, Malta 2001

Further progress

The perennial problem for the older runner is whether he should train harder to offset the inevitable slowing down or whether he should bow to the inevitable and not push himself so hard. There is no answer which will fit all cases. It is firstly a question of whether you have the time and the inclination to put in more training and secondly a question of what your body will stand.

The yearly programme

Take it season by season, spring, summer, autumn, winter.

As the days get longer, you can increase the total volume of training in March and April, and as it gets warmer you can start doing more fast sessions in April/May. With long summer days you may find that you can get out early and run for an hour before work, or run twice a day if you are retired – but only if you really want to, and if you can take it. August is a time when a lot of people are abroad on holiday, so you may cut your training back to running for half an hour every other day and then build up the miles again in September/October, when the weather is often very good for running. As Christmas approaches and the weather gets worse you have plenty of good reasons for going back into ‘mainte-nance’ mode, perhaps running three times a week and going to the gym for some weight training twice a week.

BRUCE: ‘At the end of each year I tot up my miles and look back on my racing results, and make fresh plans. When I know I am going to have the opportunity to train hard I schedule a couple of races for perhaps a month later, so that I have more incentive to keep the training going and enough time to get the benefit from it. When I know that I am going to be too busy to do much, I set a lower limit and say: I must run at least three times a week to stay reasonably fit, but I won’t race until I have four weeks decent training behind me.’

Expecting to be in top racing shape all the year round is bound to lead to disappointment, but if you come back to racing after a break you get all the more pleasure from the freshness of the experience.

Bill Foster on the road

A role model

In the picture above, Bill Foster is coming second in the World Veterans 10k Road Race, 2000. We can remember Bill running well in a schools 1500m when he was 16, and since then he has managed to combine a career as a geneticist with becoming a top class runner, a 2 hr 15 marathon runner, a British international in the European championships and the World Cup and a stalwart of Blackheath Harriers. As a veteran, he has cut down his training from the 100-miles-a-week of the international to a ‘mere’ 70 a week, which includes Bill Foster on the road one hard interval session and one ‘tempo’ session – a sustained fast run over 6–7 miles.

He succeeds as a world-class veteran because he combines hard work with common sense; he looks after himself carefully, swims more, takes it easy after hard sessions and doesn’t over-race. ‘I still enjoy competing for my club and I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of Veterans competitions. I’ve had a fantastic time, travelling to lots of countries, and most of my friends are people I’ve met through running. I can’t imagine life without it.’

Road racing tactics and strategy

After the race we are all friends, sharing the same experience, but during it, the rivalry can become quite intense. Some men will run themselves into the ground rather than get beaten by a woman, while others, realising that the woman is competing in a different category, are helpful and encouraging, sharing the pacemaking.

The older you get, the more you need to use your head. With more experience, you should be better at pace judgement and also better at choosing the right clothing for each race. If you line up for a 10k race and see someone carrying a heavy water-bottle strapped to his backside, or see someone wearing long woolly tights in a ten-mile race, when they are bound to heat up, you know that there is someone putting themselves at a disadvantage.

Where you can really score is in getting the pace right from the start. If it’s a 10k race and you are out to break 40 minutes, the right pace for the first kilo-metre is 3:55, or maybe slower if you have been held up at the start. My experience is that even pace or negative splits (second half of the race faster than the first) is the best policy, and if you do that you find yourself overtaking all the people of your ability who got it wrong in the first half.

The strategy lies in choosing your races during the year and over the years. A significant birthday, when you move up into a new five-year age-band, is often a good reason to launch a racing campaign, and likewise you will tend to race less when you are at the upper end (see Chapter 1).

Some people find that as they get older all they have left is endurance, so they run longer and longer races, or switch to multi-terrain and oddball events, where they can escape the tyranny of the watch. Others, like Steve Mottershead, find that with the right training they can do much better, relatively, in the shorter events, or they live somewhere where they can race indoors in the winter, so will adapt accordingly.

Battersea Park 5 miles

Predicting times

When you are moving up to race a longer distance for the first time, you can make a fairly a fairly accurate prediction of what you might do, on the basis of your times over 5k and 10k, as long as you have done the necessary training. Our guide-lines are shown in Table 5 below.

Table 5: Equivalent performances

5k

10k

half marathon

Marathon

15:00

31:00

68:30

2hr27

16:00

33:15

73:30

2hr37

17:00

35:20

78:00

2hr48

18:00

37:25

83:00

2hr58

19:00

39:30

87:30

3hr07

20:00

41:35

92:00

3hr18

21:00

43:40

96:30

3hr27

22:00

45:45

1hr41

3hr37

23:00

47:50

1hr46

3hr48

24:00

49:55

1hr50

3hr58

25:00

52:00

1hr55

4hr08

30:00

63:00

2hr18

4hr58

 

GARETH JONES

Age: 54

Occupation: Professor of Mathematics, Southampton University

‘I started running in my late thirties, because I felt I was becoming unfit: I was playing badminton and tennis regularly, but tiring towards the end of matches. Being competi-tive, I started entering road races to give myself a target, and when I ran 88 minutes for a hilly half marathon, in my second race, I realised that I had some ability. I soon dropped other sports and concentrated on running: I was soon winning vets prizes and by about 42 I was picking up BVAF medals. Between 42 and 47 I ran seven marathons, with a PB of 2 hr 26:57 in London, aged 43. I continued improving up to five years ago, when I ran my PB of 31:56 for 10k just before turning 49.

‘Since then the ageing process, together with breaks due to asthma and sciatica, have caused a steady decline. My main motivation now is to complete for my club, Oxford City, which has a strong vets section.

‘Teaching, research and administration are sedentary activities, but mentally quite demanding. I find it very useful, physically and psychologically, to break off for training at mid-day whenever possible. With Southampton Common and some woodland hills nearby, and a well-equipped fitness room on campus, I find I can get a good session in most days. As my time for training had become reduced by work, I’ve cut my weekly mileage, from 50 at my peak, to 30, and I only race from 800m to 10k. Nowadays much of my running is done on a tread-mill, which is kinder on the body and takes less time.

‘Athletics has brought me friendships with a much wider social range than university life and has taken me to places I wouldn’t have dreamed of visiting. My math-ematical research takes me all over the world, so I have been able to train in some challenging environments – in Kowloon, in the Negev desert and along the Olympic marathon courses in Atlanta and Moscow. The blue line is still there if you know where to look.

‘My family and colleagues initially took a strong interest in my running (partly motivated by my being up with the leading women in televised road races), but famil-iarity converted enthusiasm into tolerance. Running is gradually losing ground in my list of priorities, but as long as I stay healthy I try to find time for it each day.’