Physical Fitness Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for physical fitness professionals, athletes, trainers, and those providing health-related needs. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have joined a charity race in 1 and a half month's time. (I have 7 weeks before the race)
My PB for 10k is 48:45.
I have been running on and off since then but I can still run a 26 min 5k if I push hard.
Is my goal realistic and what's the best way to achieve it? What sort of schedule do I need?
Since you are only running 10-15 miles/week and your race is in 7 weeks with a goal of sub 45 min, it's going to be tough (unless you are an incredible athlete). Had you been following the training runs from Cool Running's 10K schedule, you would have ran 28+ miles this week.
To work on your speed you need to do speed drills and you need to up your running. It's not really a realistic goal... HOWEVER...
Cool Running's training schedule is somewhat conservative. That schedule is for a 40 min - 48 min finish time and you said you can already do it in 48:45 min. You can try out the training run for the week you should be on and see how you feel. If you feel good, keep going with the schedule!
I've never managed to get below 46 minutes for a 10k because there is actually quite a big fitness and training gap with just those two minutes. As Rhea points out it's down to miles per week and then raising the tempo from 4:36 km/minute to 4:30 (I think) or using another strategy such as increasing the tempo post 5k.
Increasing the weekly mileage will make shaving a few seconds per minute off easier, however the speed training is important for the races as you're rarely able to keep one consistent pace with a lot of runners.
I've linked it a few times on the site but the Runner's World Smart Coach can really help, and also doing the speed training on a treadmill. I realise that as someone who hasn't done a sub 45 minute race my advice is really just anecdotal, however I believe enough miles per week turns it into a breeze.
McMillian's running calculator does a pretty good job of estimating races with a reasonable distance with proper training..
Assuming you can do that 26 min 5k, it translates into a 54:01 assuming proper training. To get to 48, you'd have to run 40 seconds or so faster for each mile. That's a chunk of speed to knock off.
I'd ignore you PB time unless it was more recent than the 26 min 5k.
Increase your base and the times will go down.
