Treadmill Workouts for 10k ?

by James

Treadmill workouts for 10k running is a great way of getting in shape, very fast - injury free. As you can see in some of the other articles around - I am a big fan of treadmill running. Simply because, combined with "normal" outdoors running can be extremely effective.

I got this question from James :

Hi i would like to be able to run 10km in 50min. Motivation is not a problem for me. I was wondering if you could suggest a tredmill workout program? i have several months to be able to run this distance. Right now i run 5km in 26 min on the tredmill. thanks James

Hi James,

If you are using a treadmill to improve your 10k time, I would go for two kinds of workouts.

One of them being longer repeats with running recovery. Say sessions of 8 x 3 minutes. The 3 minutes should be run at around your half marathon times. Then in between the 3 minutes, 1 minute running recovery, only about 30 secs/km slower than your 3 minute runs. So a very active recovery.

This in combination with runs where you do 45 sec running, 15 sec recovery (jump off treadmill) Go up with 0.2 km/hr for each repeat. When you have done 20 of these (all with 45 sec running and 15 sec rec, up 0.2 on each) take a two minute break before doing 5 additional 45/15 at the same speed as nr 20...

This kind of shorter reps but with very short recovery is extremely effective for a better 10k time (highly underetimated type of session). Alternative to this is 15-30-45-60 sec with 15 sec rec between each repeat, before doing down to 15-30-45-60 again. Speed, up 0.2 km/series.

Say you are running 4 times weekly. One of these runs is smart to run outdoors, the rest can be on a treadmill (you usually need about 25 % of runs outdoors to not lose the outdoors toeoff). 1 run easy running about 45 min to 1 hour. 2 sessions of the shorter 45/15 type runs. And the last one the longer reps with running recovery.

I wish you all the best with your running and thanks for visiting the site.

Marius