Time~40m
Distance7.5 km
DifficultyHard
Target: ≤ 23:00
Route: Run quality sessions on the FLATTEST route you have. Your routes now average ~14 m of climb per km — nearly three times your historical average — and goal pace on that terrain is a different, much harder session than the one written.
Ground you know
7.2 km · hilly, 17 m/kmsteepest descent −10 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:52/km
7.1 km · hilly, 17 m/kmsteepest descent −28 m in km 6 · run once · best 5:42/km
7.1 km · hilly, 18 m/kmsteepest descent −34 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:09/km
8.0 km · rolling, 12 m/kmsteepest descent −10 m in km 1 · run once · best 5:46/km
Instructions
Warm-up
11.5 km easy warm-up + 4 strides6:10–6:45 /km
Read
2Same course every benchmark, as flat as you can find — ideally a track or a measured 5 km. GPS over-reads your distance by ~2%, so a watch-measured 5 km is really ~4.9 km; repeating one known course is what makes these times comparable to each other and to the goal.
Work
35 km time trial — even splits, no fast first km
Read
4≤ 23:00 → sub-45 stays the goal. 23:00–23:45 → keep going, decide at week 14. Slower → the week-16 attempt becomes a 46–48 min stepping stone.
Cooldown
51 km easy cool-down6:15–6:50 /km