How Does Long Course Training Affect Your 10K Speed?

Train faster run faster, right? Let's assume that is true, so how much faster? I've done the experiment on myself and I share with you the results. Join our community at Transcript 0:07 Hi and welcome to the lonely triathlete. My name is Todd, and I am the lonely triathlete coming to you live from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, on this Sunday, April 26 2026. 0:22 Welcome to the lonely triathlete. This is a podcast where I talk about age group, training and racing and promote community in an effort to help us all be a little less lonely. Now I'm suffering at the moment, and probably in a way in which you cannot guess. And I'm going to eliminate the guesswork right now - I feel like, for the past five minutes, I'm gonna burp just I can't, I can't get a burp out. So I would be shocked if I don't burp in the middle of this podcast. And this is an authentic podcast, I don't edit 99.9% of the time. I don't edit anything, so I'm not going to edit. I will. I will not burp in your ear. I guarantee you that. But I'm just telling you that feeling of having an impending burp, 1:25 it's almost worse than an aerobic threshold. It's almost worse than VO2max intervals, I just found something that like hurts more than a triathlon experience. 1:39 Okay, so let's get past the bodily issues and move on to this episode. You know there are a few things I have always wondered in my 25 years of racing, I've always wondered, can I produce or does Olympic distance standard course distance training, does it produce a decent 10k speed in and of itself, mixing in your swimming and your biking and your running and your strength training, like how? How close to your kind of optimal 10k speed do you really get with that kind of training? So that's always been in the back of my mind. 2:26 Second is, how much faster could I get if I put triathlon training on the back burner for a while and just did dedicated run training, and then finally, would 70.3 training, or Ironman training, make me significantly faster or slower in a standalone 10k race? And how much faster or slower? I'm assuming it would be slower, but how much slower would I be Well, I have the answer to these questions, because for me, for many years, I have trained almost exclusively for Olympic distance triathlons. I did one Half Ironman. I did one Ironman, but mostly it's been Olympic distance. So I'm very familiar with how my body responds to Olympic distance training, and what my 10k times are within Olympic races. And so accounting for variability in run course elevation, my 10k times have been for the past decade, they've been between 45 minutes, which is really fast, like, almost so fast it makes me question the course distance, like, was it accurate or not? And 52 minutes on the other end, which is super slow. Like, what the heck happened? Did I just go too hard on the bike? Or what's going on? So 45 to 52 so let's call my average 10k speed in an Olympic distance 48 minutes. Okay, so you can almost bet on me being within plus or minus 10-15% of that in any race. Now I've also sprinkled in a few standalone 10k races in between triathlons, and those times have been consistently, on average, about one and a half to two minutes faster? Well, that makes sense. I didn't just swim for 30 minutes and bike for an hour and 10 minutes. So that makes sense. But the missing piece to this is I've also done dedicated run training leading up to some of these races anywhere from four weeks to twelve weeks, and that, by itself, improved my time another couple of minutes to the point where my personal best is 42:43. 5:14 And that was achieved on about four months of Dedicated run training. So to answer the first question, Olympic distance training, from for me, I'm imagining, for most people, it does produce a pretty decent 10k time. However, standalone racing helps you go quite a bit faster, and if you add in some dedicated run training, maybe six weeks of run training prior to the race. That adds even more speed. I know it's not rocket science, but it's really it's really interesting to see it in action. It's like where theory meets meets practicality. Now, the only part of this experiment that I had been missing for the past 20 some years, is seeing how a switch to 70.3 training might affect my 10k Speed. Ah, that's interesting, because, as you would know, if you've ever done 70.3 or Ironman training, you don't do a lot of speed work in in in your run training. A little bit, but nothing like you would if you were dedicated to a 10k plan. So last year, as it happens, all I did was train and race a 70.3 Well, I raced in the Olympic afterwards, but my most of my training was completely centered around a 70.3 and ideally, I would have done the race and then a few weeks later, run a standalone 10k just to see what the difference is. But instead, what I did was I ran my 70.3 and then I trained a dedicated run plan. I trained with a dedicated run plan, and then posted a 49:53 last September. 7:14 So I did the 70.3 and then did a little bit more racing and took some dedicated time to focus on my 10k and even after that, I barely broke 50 minutes when I just said my average in a triathlon is 48 minutes standalone is faster than that. So anyway, I can conclude, therefore that 70.3 training dropped my 10k speed by at least five minutes. So interesting. Now fast forward from last September to today, where this morning I ran the Times Colonist 10K race in Victoria. This is a huge run in this area. There were over 11,000 runners signed up for this race. It's the equivalent of the Vancouver Sun run, which draws like over 40,000 runners, so if we factor in Victoria's much, much smaller population, relatively speaking, it's probably of the same magnitude. Now, since last October, 8:33 all I did was train for Olympic distance triathlon. So based on my past results, and with my reference point being that sub 50 10k I did last September, I thought, You know what? Today, based on all this Olympic distance training, I think I probably should run a somewhere around a 47:30 now today, the weather was amazing. It was incredible. blue sky, sun. 10:29 I couldn't believe it. I mean, some of these people, I look at them and say, I would never have pegged you for a runner, and you're ahead of me, or some older gentleman in front of me I would normally pass in a triathlon, I couldn't pass them. I was like shaking my head, thinking there are some good runners in Victoria. Wow. Blew my mind. Very, very, very good legion of runners in this area. So anyway, I held on to my pace, nice rolling course. So up these long gradual hills, I just held to that threshold pace. And of course, I was not really able to take in much of the awe inspiring scenery through my haze of increasing agony. But every once in a while, I'd say to myself, "Oh, I've been here before. Oh, I know where this is" before, I retreated mentally back into my self preservation mantras. And then when I saw the nine kilometer sign, I stepped it up a notch, and it hurt a lot. I kept telling myself, this is this is the mantra I was repeating. "This pain is what you've been seeking. This pain is what you've been seeking. The pain is what you've been seeking". And then when I got tired of that one I'd go to, "you're in the pain you're looking for, you're in the pain you're looking for". And then my third mantra was around, around the the how do I lose my words right now? It was akin to saying, "relish it, relish it. Relish it. Enjoy it, enjoy it. This is what you wanted. Is what you needed". Anyway, I went into some haze of pain, and I recalled in that moment, as I was rounding the final turn for the finish line of the couple of kilometers back, I was passed by a guy that looked like a Gold's Gym bodybuilder, you know, the type thighs rubbing together, almost making fire with the inside of his thighs, 12:48 Anyway, I had just written him off as one of these many freaks of nature, like how in the world he looked like he was easily 220 pounds to my 175 and yet somehow he was powering through faster than me. But in this final km I saw him up ahead of me, maybe with 500 meters to go, and then the finish line was in sight, and with a couple 100 meters to go, I just accelerated into a full sprint. Came up behind him. He started accelerating, not because of me. He didn't see me, but he saw the finish line coming up. And I just it's just as I was pulling even he started to accelerate, but I had the stronger kick, and I beat him to the finish line by about 10 feet. I went home today. That was my happy moment. I shouldn't be. I beat a bodybuilder in the 10k Oh my gosh. I wish I got his race number. I want to look him up. That was, it was a, it was an awe inspiring sight. I wish, I wish I actually had more of my wits about me. And I really like talked to him and found out what, how in the world is that possible? Anyhow, this is what you probably want to know. Maybe you don't want to know. I'm gonna tell you anyway, my finishing time. My finishing time was 4612 14:17 much, much faster than the 47:30 I'd anticipated, I ended up placing 12th out of 216 in my category. So top 6% I'm proud of that. I then looked ahead to the next category to see how much better I would have done, you know, if I was just as fast, but a bit older, turns out, I would have been done. I would have done about the same, like I said, Victoria has fast, fast runners. Wow. So in a nutshell, I confirmed, with my own experience that Olympic distance training can produce pretty decent 10k times, and that only dedicated training improves that even more, and that longer distance training, like for a 70.3 and I can only assume, for an Ironman, definitely makes you slower, and that's not a bad thing. But if running 10k races is your jam, then you're gonna want to add some dedicated run training time before you took that you take that 10k on. Anyhow, that is my experience this morning. 15:28 And now I want to get on to some other very exciting news. The Lonely triathlete Patreon page and membership option goes live now literally, now on Sunday night. So if you become a paid subscriber, you'll get ad free episodes, but you don't have ads. Todd, hmm, well, I might soon you never know. He said slyly. So you'll get ad free episodes. You'll have early episode releases. You'll have access to my entire 200 plus episode archive, and I just burped, and you never knew. And you'll have the ability to, this is what I'm excited about. You're going to have the ability to comment on every episode and have participation in polls and surveys that will help you shape this podcast, and starting with this episode and every one going forward, I'm going to make bonus content, bonus content who doesn't like bonus content. 16:37 Now, if you want to keep listening for free, go for it. I'm going to always make the last 10 episodes of this podcast free, so don't worry, you'll have lots to listen to. It won't suddenly drop off your radar. So if you want to support this show and build with me, we're doing this together. I mean, I can't do it on my own. Build with me a community of like minded age group triathletes head on over the Patreon up with a link in the show notes, and let's get all get a little little less lonely together until next time. Peace.

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How Does Long Course Training Affect Your 10K Speed? is an episode from The Lonely Triathlete - triathlon training and motivation for the masses by Todd Sauder.

This episode is 17:30 long.

This episode was published on Apr 27, 2026.

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