CHRIS THOMPSON
The Team GB star and European 10,000m silver medallist shares his hard-run wisdom on how to run your best 10K
According to RW’s recent survey of the UK’s runners, the 10K breaks the tape in a photo finish alongside the half as our favourite race distance. And there’s a lot to love about the 10K – it requires a great combination of speed and endurance, which means you have to be a good all-round athlete to run it well, and that’s reflected in the variety you get in training. When it comes to the race itself, you can put it all out there and however things pan out on the day, you’ll be ready to go at it again the following month.
As with any race distance, there’s a real art to 10K running, and an athlete who knows more than most about mastering it is former European 10,000m silver medallist Chris Thompson. One of Britain’s best distance runners, Thompson has worn the GB vest over four decades since donning his first in 1998, appearing at two Olympic Games, excelling at a range of distances and moving from track to road to win the Great South Run 10-miler three times and the 2021 British Marathon Trials just a month shy of his 40th birthday. Over the following pages, he gives us a fascinating insight into how to run your best 10K, along with some philosophical multitasking to show you how doing so can help in your life outside your racing shoes.
RUNNER’S WORLD: What are the key elements of the most effective 10K training plan?
CHRIS THOMPSON: ‘For any middle-or long-distance event, until you move up to marathon or maybe half, you need this philosophy of training over distance and under distance. Earlier in a 10K training block, I tried to dedicate an equal amount of effort to training as I would for a 5K, training as I would for a half marathon and training as I would for a 10K. You should try to cover all those bases earlier in the training cycle, then as your 10K race day approaches, focus more on 10K-specific work.
‘Even when you break down sessions on a particular day, there should be that thought process of playing with the speed – and the speeds you play with are slightly slower than race pace, slightly faster than race pace and at race pace – mixing it all up. Think of the Swedish term, Fartlek, meaning “speed play”. In terms of how you split it up, the simple rule is aiming for an equal amount of effort dedicated to those three different components. Effort rather than time, because obviously an eight-mile tempo run at half marathon effort is going to take you longer than running 20 minutes at 5K effort – but the effort is the same.’
RW: Were there any key sessions you used to gauge whether you were ready for race day?
CT: ‘A key session for me, around 10 to 12 day
