Running News Daily

Try kilometer countdowns for your next speed workout

If you’re training for a 5K or 10K and are getting bored of doing the same four or five workouts over and over again, try this one on for size: kilometre countdowns. It’s fun, it’s got some off-distance intervals to change things up, and it can be done at pretty much any point during your training block.

The workout

The idea behind this workout is to gradually get faster as the intervals get shorter, so make sure you choose your starting point wisely. Ideally, you do the first interval at 5K pace and speed up from there, but if you’re not quite there yet, you can start closer to 10K pace.

This workout is a great way to practice running faster on tired legs. It also gives you a bit of a mental break, because it gets the longest intervals over with right at the beginning, so you can fly home to the finish. Ideally, you should start each interval at either the 400m startline, or the 200m startline to make it easier to keep track of laps. With that in mind, your recovery should be an easy jog or walk to your starting point, never taking more than 400m or less than 200m of recovery.

Warmup: 10-15 minutes easy jog, followed by form drills and strides

Workout: 1,000m (400m jog recovery), 900m (300m jog recovery), 800m (400m jog recovery), 700m (300m jog recovery), 600m (400m recovery), 500 (300m recovery), 400m (400m recovery), 300m (300m recovery), 200m

Cooldown: 10-15 minutes easy jog, followed by light stretching