How to improve your parkrun time

How to improve your parkrun time

Parkruns have become such a popular running event as they happen every weekend. We've been getting some questions on how to improve your Parkrun time, which we answer in the video below and give you some tips and tricks to try.

So if you want to smash a parkrun PB then this is how...

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 Short videos showing you EXACTLY what to do (Number 6 will turn you into the "Marathon Slayer" so that you don't hit the wall and implode later in the race)

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Transcription

 

BRAD
Welcome on to the next edition of RUN with Coach Parry. My name is Brad, we've got the coach with us once again and today we talking about Parkruns, and in particular, how to improve your park run time. Lindsey, welcome back on, nice to touch base with you again.

LINDSEY
Brad, it's always good to chat.

BRAD
Lindsey, a great question. We spoke last week about Parkrun and how to incorporate it into your training, particularly if you're training for longer events, like marathons or ultra marathons. But we had another great question in our forums. And it's got to do with improving your Parkrun time. Parkrun's a fantastic event. 5k's, they happen around the world and we find people racing them every single weekend. But we've had someone wanting to know how to improve their Parkrun time. If you've got some general tips and ideas on what people can do to get faster on their weekly Parkrun?

LINDSEY
Absolutely. So Parkrun, part of the reason why it's such a success is because it's one of the classic distances. So it's really short, if you want to get started. I mean, obviously if you haven't run for 30 years, 5K's is a long way, but it's really just this achievable number. So it's this great short little distance that people are like, yeah, I can do that. And even if they have to walk most of it the first time, you know, you're still not out for hours, you're out for maybe an hour. And the other part of it is that, in terms of going all out, it's also the classic distance. So you got the marathon on one hand, but the 5K is about as close as you can come to literally going all out and being able to hold it for 5K's. Often in exercise physiology textbooks, and whatever, they talk about the 5K being a good test of VO2 max. So it's really a cool distance for people to train hard for.

 

Training consistently and improving coordination

 

So for me, there are two aspects, probably a couple more, but we'll talk maybe about two to three aspects on how we can improve. But obviously, the first and biggest improvement for everybody is going to come from getting consistent training, and doing enough training in the aerobic zone, or as I like to say, running very, very easy. So that's where most of our training's going to happen. Hopefully the question has come from someone who has spent a bit of time there, they can now comfortably run this 5K. And they've tried to start racing and they've kind of hit a wall with it and aren't getting any improvements. Then when we look and delve into that, we essentially looking at two places where we can improve and both of them are in a way working on a very similar thing.

And one of the things that we need to run extremely fast, is very good coordination. So part of what we do when we actually run faster and train harder and do speed work - yes we are training a slightly different energy system, but a very important component of that is that we are improving our coordination and we are improving the body's ability for the muscles to contract and relax faster, and contract and relax in a coordinated fashion. So there are two ways that I would work on that.

 

Shorter, faster workouts

 

The first way is that you need to look at your 5k time that you currently running at Parkrun and then you can design a whole lot of workouts, some that are slightly shorter, some that are slightly longer, but they all revolve around the key concept that you want to be running between five and eight seconds per k faster than you're running in that 5k Parkrun. Now that pace is selected, because again we always want to avoid getting injured, so that pace is selected so that we're forcing ourselves to run faster, we're doing it for shorter periods of time and so we are improving that coordination, as well as working on our anaerobic energy system, but at a much lower risk.

Because most people, you notice I haven't used the word speed work or track, because as soon as you use those kind of words, people now want to go out and they want to sprint. So you can do a variety of things that would be something along the lines of 5 x 3 minutes, at three to eight seconds faster than your time trial pace with three minute recoveries, or 12x 1 minute, or 5-8 x 1.5 minutes. You can do some hill sprints, but then the hill sprints would probably be more at that 5k pace, but because you're now running them on a hill, they're going to be quite a lot harder than that, it will feel quite a lot harder than the 5K.

So you've got this wide variety of workouts that I would aim to add in once a week. And then in the week that you decide to go and race your Parkrun, so you run Parkrun every week, but you don't race Parkrun every week. Or you incorporate some of these interval sessions into the Parkrun on a weekly basis. And then every three to four weeks, you can really run that Parkrun hard to test how well that programme is working, but also so that you can adjust that speed work. So obviously, as your Parkrun gets faster, then that speed work will also get slightly faster. And when you do the hard Parkrun, then you'll leave that speed work out of your week. So that week, it will be easy runs, you get to the Parkrun, and you race the Parkrun.

 

Running Drills

 

And then the other aspect, which is a little bit more complicated, and most people probably won't take the time to do it, but it's another cracking way to improve your coordination. And that's to incorporate 5 to 10 minutes of drills at the end of some of your runs. So you can jump on the internet and search running drills, but there's lots of coordination drills that you can do, including the drills that the sprinters do, those are fantastic. They're not that easy and you realize when you try and do them just how coordinated and well coordinated sprinters are. But incorporating those drills for 5 to 10 minutes. Once or twice a week at the end of some training sessions or as a warm up. For your high intensity sessions, you will really improve your coordination which will lead to improvements in your Parkrun time

BRAD
That is awesome. We've put together a pretty cool little resource for you as well. If you'd like to improve your Parkrun time, all you need to do is head over to coachparry.com/parkrun. As always great to catch up. Thank you for your time. Until next time from myself, Brad, and the coach. It's cheers.

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