The man on the left is Steve Moneghetti from Australia who was a 2:08 marathoner back in the day and still a 30:00 10K runner in his mid-forties. He is also the originator of what I think is the most genius bang for the buck stress workout a distance runner can do. The so called Moneghetti fartlek consists of surges of 2 x :90, 4 x :60, 4 x :30 and 4 x :15 with equal time recoveries. The key to the workout is how hard you push the 'easy' segments. I hadn't done this workout in a while, but today I laced up the racing flats and after a 3 mile easy warm up lit it up for 20 minutes. On paper it doesn't sound so hard, but if you hit the surges at 5K effort and push the recoveries, it feels almost like a race effort. Today, I covered 3.25 miles in 20 minutes on a marked mile path, hitting splits of 6:08, 6:10, 6:10. This means I was probably doing my 5K surges at 5:40-5:50 and the 'easy' portions at 6:30 give or take, so really not so easy. As a point of reference, when I was breaking 17 for 5K a few years ago I could hit the 3-mile mark in this workout in high 17's/low 18s, so I'm getting there. A few weeks ago I did a similar stress workout of 10 x :60 on / :60 off and was 28 seconds slower at 3 miles than I was today. I recommend this workout if you want to bring on the pain.
For the week I hit 55 miles, mainly easy distance outside of today's workout and a session of 5 x mile w/ 2:00 recoveries on Tuesday where I started about 1:00 slower per mile than current 5K pace and dropped 15 seconds per rep. Next up for me race wise is a 5K on Labor Day and I'm guessing I should hit about 17:20 - 17:30 nice weather permitting.
