sub 40 10k or sub 90 1/2? (Read 166 times)

McMillan calculator says a 40:00 10K is equivalent to a 1:29:10 HM, so the 10K target in theory is "tougher."  Much depends on your strengths as a runner - I'm stronger at shorter distances and have trouble hitting the "equivalent" of my 5K as I move up in distance, even with lots of volume, so the HM target might be tougher for someone like me.

I would say that you can race a lot more 10Ks throughout the year than HMs - although they're difficult to find in some regions, they're a lot easier to recover from!

It is close. How many miles you run per week? What is your history? Have you run halfs before? One year I ran a 41:03 10K and one month before ran a 1:30:35 half on about 25-30 miles per week.  Depends on many variables, your history of carrying over your 5K performance to longer events, muscle make up, training, racing strategy etc.

For someone starting from 0 or low mileage, I think they're more likely to run sub-40:00 long before they are ready to run sub-1:30 because it takes a lot of time and miles to work your way up the kind of mileage most runners need for that time in a HM. For someone who already runs good HM training miles I expect the sub-40:00 for 10K would be harder. My own experience bears this out though I'm also sure this is by no means generally the case. By the time I worked my 10k time back down to sub-40:00 I was running 1:27 for the HM.

Those were pretty equivalent milestones for me.

If you've been running a lot of mileage I have to believe the <1:30 half will be easier but not by much.  Out of curiosity I went back to the old days to see how I did.  Turns out  I could run a <1:30 1/2 well before I dipped under 40 for the 10K.  But I had been running probably about 40mpw with at least two days off per week and never raced anything shorter than the marathon so definitely undertrained compared to how I train now.  I ran a 40:45 10K in March of 98 and then a marathon in April, another marathon in October (3:20, 3:06) and finally a 1/2 in 1:29:03 in Jan '99.  I did run a 39:28 not too much later (in March of 99) so it's not clear-cut   Also, in Jan 2000 I ran 1:31:45 for the 1/2 and Mar 2000 ran 39:32 for 10K.

Moral of the story ... who knows, you just have to get after it and see for yourself.

For me, one was not necessarily easier than the other, they were equally tough. I did run the sub-1:30 first, but was probably in sub-40:00 shape when I did it. Both were the result of 5 and 10k specific training running around 50 miles per week.

My thought is to train for speed first, but that's mostly because I suck at distance. 

sub 40 minute 10k would be easier than a sub 90 half imo. Would rather run a 10k than half any day!