Running
British ultrarunner Tom Evans shares his six favourite short training runs for boosting aerobic capacity and building endurance.
We spoke to British ultrarunner Tom Evans to find out his six top running sessions for when he's short on time.
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About the sessions
Tom's top picks are all 60 minutes or less, so you can easily slot them in before breakfast, during your lunch break, or later in the evening before the sun sets. Tom uses the harder workouts to help boost his aerobic capacity, while the easier sessions help him to build his endurance levels.
“Depending on your level of fitness, if you do these sessions you should begin to see a change in your mile times after two or three weeks,” says Tom. “I’d recommend doing no more than two hard sessions a week – my focus is always 80% easy running and 20% hard running.
“I’d also suggest taking at least one non-running day a week for recovery. Your body makes its adaptations during recovery, not during the sessions, so you have to give it ample time to rest and recover to improve your performance, stay injury-free and enjoy your running as much as possible.”
1. 10km and 5km effort intervals
Effort: Hard
“With all of these sessions, I always start with a 10-minute jog to warm up and see how my body feels,” says Tom. “For this session, I do 6mins at 10km pace/effort, with a 3min jog recovery, then 4mins at 10km pace with a 2min recovery, followed by 2mins at 5km pace with a 1min recovery, and 1min at 5km pace with 30secs recovery.
“Then I repeat the whole set again, and finish with a 10min jog to cool down, making a total time of 59 minutes.”
To work out your 10km and 5km pace, you can either calculate it based on any existing PBs you might have, or simply work out roughly how long you think it would take you to run 10km, then calculate the pace.
“If you don’t know what your 10km or 5km times are, there are websites such as Jack Daniels’ VDOT where you can put in PBs, or estimated times, and it will give you a rough guideline of what pace it thinks you will run longer or shorter distances.”
2. Hill session
Effort: Hard
“For this session, I start with a 10min jog, then do 10x 2min hill reps, with a 2min jog back down between each rep,” says Tom. “Effort-wise, each uphill rep is hard but to the point I feel I could do another 30secs at the end of each one – it's not all-out effort. I then finish with a 10-minute jog.
Tom says that ideally the hill needs to be long enough to run up for 2mins. “If you can’t get 2mins you could change it and do, say, 20x 1min hill reps. The incline of the hill will vary depending on where you are, but ideally it wouldn’t be steep enough that you need to walk."
3. Progressive tempo
Effort: Hard
“I start this with a 10min jog, then do 20mins at marathon pace – easy to moderate – followed by 5mins easy. Then I do 10mins tempo – a little faster than what I did for the 20mins, but nothing crazy – then 5mins easy. After that, I do 5mins faster tempo, followed by 5mins easy. That's an hour in total and helps to build your aerobic base and push on your aerobic capacity a bit further.
“I don’t worry too much about pace during this session – I concentrate more on effort. You can go off feel via a rating of one to 10 (one being easy), so I'd do the 20mins at five, 10mins at six and the 5mins at seven.”
4. Easy 60 minutes
Effort: Easy
“People often neglect running easy,” says Tom. “So this is a session that I make sure is really easy, effort-wise – a two or three out of 10. It's one where I could listen to a podcast, or run it with a friend, or in a group, and have a chat. I do far more easy sessions in a week than hard – off-road if possible, to protect your legs a little.”
5. Track session
Effort: Hard
This is another simple one from Tom – but this one he does on a running track.
“I spend a little more time warming up and doing stretches at the start, as the efforts during this session are harder. Then I do 10-12 lots of 400m, off a 60-second jog.
“I aim to speed up my reps as I work through the session, and end feeling as though I could do one or two more reps at the end without completely blowing up.”
6. Time trial
Effort: Hard
“This is great to see what sort of shape you are in. I simply run either 5km or 10km as fast as I can. You can do it off times, too, for example, seeing how far you can run in 45 minutes, so you can get a warm-up and warm down in before and after.”
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