Can I Achieve 10k in 60 Minutes?

by Helen
(St Albans, England)

I am a 44 year old female who has been running for about 18 months. I did a 10k last year in 1:16:35. The course is a mixture of grass, trail and a kilometre long (shallow) hill at 3.5k. This year I did the same 10k in 1:12:08.

My training consists of about 10-15 miles a week, including an easy 3 miler, 6 x 400 intervals and a long run of 5 miles. I also do kettlebell exercises twice a week. I would love to achieve 10k in 60 minutes but right now to sustain that speed seems impossible. I would be grateful for any guidance you could give. Many thanks.

Answer by Dominique:

Hi there,
Thanks for your question about your goal to run 10k in 60 minutes. It's a great goal to have. And I do think there are a few things you can do to improve your 10k goal time. Let's tackle them as follows:

1. Increase your mileage
2. More variation in your speedwork
3. Practice races
4. Keep doing the strength training

Increase Your Mileage

Your overall training looks pretty good. Five days of training with two strength training days is solid.

The 10-15 miles a week is a good start, but when you want to run for time you will want to look at increasing that. It would be great if you could make both the easy 3-miler and the long run of 5 miles longer, e.g. 5 miles and 8 miles.

You don't have to be aggressive about it. Just add half a mile every week or every other week to the runs. Check out a bit more on how to go about increasing mileage on the Increasing Mileage Safely page.

When you are training for a 10k goal it is very doable to cover that distance in at least one of your runs each week. That alone will give you a lot more endurance, but also a lot more confidence. You want to get into a position in which running a 10k in training is no big deal at all.

And, when possible, consider adding a fourth day of running into your schedule. Does not need to be long. Just another 30-40 minute easy run or so will do.

By the way, when that 8 miles long run becomes very comfortable, feel free to build it up a bit more!

More Variation in Your Speedwork

Secondly, you are doing some good speedwork with your intervals. 6 x 400m is good. However, the risk you run with only doing this workout, is that your body is getting way too accustomed to it and you are not getting a good training stimulus out of it.

So, I would recommend a few things:

Longer total interval distance
Generally, I have my 5k and 10k runners cover about 3 miles / 5k in total interval distance, e.g. build your 6 x 400m up to a 12 x 400m workout.

Vary the length of the intervals
Play around with the interval distance. Instead of always doing 400s, have a go at doing 600s or 800s as well. The longer intervals are a lot trickier to do!

Vary the intensity
The intervals should be done at faster than your 10k pace. They are generally reasonably close to 5k race pace. It is great to be doing some of your workouts at a pace faster than race pace. However, I'd also like to see you do workouts at about race pace and a bit slower than race pace.

So, instead of only doing intervals, I would much rather see you do tempo running as well. Tempo running is a hard, but comfortable speed. They say it is the speed you can maintain for about an hour. So, for you, that's reasonably close to 10k race pace.

Start off by doing shorter tempo intervals (e.g. 4 x 5 min tempo with 1-2 min recovery in between) and build the length of the tempo intervals up over time until you get to about 3 x 12 min tempo or 3 x 15 min tempo or so.

Practice Races

It sounds like this 10k is the only race you do in the year. That's fine, but I'd recommend just adding a few more 5k races in the mix. Maybe there is a parkrun close by your house that you can participate in and now and again, try and race it.

Maybe there are other local 5k races you can do. It will be good to build some racing fitness and to test yourself.

My Race Conversion Calculator indicates that a 1 hour 10k is equivalent with a 5k race in 28:46.

So, once you get that 5k at a level of 28:46 or better, you know that you'll have the fitness to run a sub-60 minute 10k.

Keep Doing the Strength Training

Two days of strength training is great for runners. The kettlebell exercises are likely to give you a good overall body workout and may include a cardiovascular stimulus as well.

It sounds like you have found a great routine that is keeping you healthy and fit. But if you were to do the same kettlebell workout, with the same weights, all the time, your body gets very used to it. So, just make sure you keep on challenging yourself. You can do this through heavier weights, more exercises, more reps, etc. Just be conscious of giving your body a bit of a challenge.

This should get you in a great position to improve your 10k time in the next race. Of course, I am not going to guarantee you that you'll wipe those 12 minutes off your time. It's a sizeable gap at the moment. But with these adjustments in your training, you'll build your endurance, fitness, speed and strength. Much better race times will be the simple result of all that work you'll be putting in your training.

For further training advice and personalized running programs, check out my running coaching services.

Hope this helps.
Best of luck.
Kind regards,
Dominique