What does 25:00 8k training look like? Do I have a shot?

You are not a 25:00 guy. You can not rush to being a 25:00 guy by training like one before you are ready. You need to train like a 27:00 guy right now. Spend the next few weeks letting 27:00 training become easier, then your team's training will push you to a new level. You can not force these things in the summer. Read Summer of Malmo, again.

It took me 2 years go go from 26:20 to 25:00 (but 26-25 in 1), but it's certainly doable in 1 if you're talented. Besides, how upset can you really be if you only end up going 25:20 or whatever?

At this time the season before I ran 25:00, I was running 90-100 mpw with some awful tempo runs in the 17:30 (5k), 28:50 (5 mile) range. Just keep plugging away and see where you are come September.

whatever your mileage was during the summer of last yr, run your weekly average, plus 10%. just focus on getting more miles in, as you likely will have little control of anything else during the season (training wise).

You're not there yet, but don't worry! You'll get there. Stay consistent and smart. Train according to the shape you're in now, not where you want to be, or else you'll just go through this cycle of injured/overtrained, recover, and do it over again and never really get anywhere.

Also remember, it's cross country, so the courses are difficult, weather comes into play, etc. so shooting for a random barrier won't be that satisfying actually. My best race in college by far was a race in which I ran 25:50, even though I have run about 80 seconds faster before. There was mud on every inch of the course from a week of rain, there were big hills, but I crushed the race and won our conference meet over a bunch of 14 minute 5k guys who I was usually about 20 seconds behind.

To more directly answer your question, here's what my training load looked like before I ran 24:3x, but was more consistently around 25:00.

-My long runs were consistently 16-18 miles at a comfortable 6:45 ish pace, usually the last couple miles were faster.

-Most workouts we did were threshold paced, which for me meant I was doing 8000-11000 meters of work (800s,1ks,12s,16s,2ks) @ 5:12 pace. These workouts weren't extremely challenging but they get the job done for cross country. On a lot of these workouts, he'd let us kind of hammer the last rep, so many times if I'd been running 9x1000 @ 3:10, the last one would be around 3:00 or under.

We also did tempo runs, so we'd run 6-8 miles cutting down from 6:00 pace to 5:20 pace, and then we'd throw in some hard hill workouts at 5k effort or so, and near the end of the season to peak we'd do something like 3 x 1600 @ our goal race effort.

-My mileage was usually around 85-90 a week which I found to be my sweet spot. I toyed with 100 plus but it didn't work for me.

So just let it come to you, you'll progress faster than you think if you can just stay consistent and not miss big chunks of training. That whole range of threshold, 10k, 8k pace workouts aren't that challening, but you've got to be able to do a lot of work at that pace before you're ready to run that for a race.

Oh, and the spring before that XC season I had run 30:30 and 14:40 ish, and the spring after I ran 29:20 and 14:10 ish, to give you an indication of where I was at.

BUT, I also ran with a bunch of miler/1500 types who ran under 25:00 who had trouble cracking 15:00 (granted they never really ran it), but were running 4:0x / 3:48, 1:50, etc.

You've got a long way to go. Nothing you're doing now indicates that you're anywhere near 25:00. If you're ready to run 25:00 on a reasonably flat xc course your tempos would probably be more like 5:15-5:30 pace instead of 5:45-6:00 pace. However your 15:44 indicates that you might have the talent to run 25 flat eventually.My advice is keep doing what you're doing. Don't try to train like a 25:00 guy (or even a 26:00 guy) because you'll wreck yourself. Just keep the effort the same on your runs and workouts and they will naturally get faster as your fitness progresses.

You are closer than you think.

It depends on your coach and the training/racing you do this fall. Too much of either and the answer to your question is, "no".

I agree with whoever said don't worry about the 25 minute barrier for cross country but just put in the work so that you're competing with the 25 minute guys. The time will come.

I went from 26 mid freshman year to 25 low my sophomore year by running consistent 80 to 85 mpw all in singles. (I would have liked to run doubles but couldn't pull it off with my summer work requirements).

My bread and butter pre season workout that year started in early August (or before you report to your team) was, once a week, 20 laps on the track; alternating 75/90 second laps. With the 75 second lap the constant I started out at around 28 minutes but by the time the season started I was running fairly comfortably around 27 minutes. I always felt that workout, over all the other race prep stuff, really allowed me to become more competitive during the season.

Best of luck. If you can stay consistent and healthy I think the strength you'll gain from this summer will pay off during the XC season.

Look at all these people piddling around. If you're not a talented runner, you're going to need to put in serious mileage to run 25:00. 70-80 is not gonna cut it. You'd need more like 100-125 miles a week, for many weeks at a time. Plus quality aerobic work. Most likely, you're not ready for that kind of training right now.

If it takes someone 100+ miles to be able to run 25 min 8k they should consider doing another sport.

dfsfdsfds wrote:

Look at all these people piddling around. If you're not a talented runner, you're going to need to put in serious mileage to run 25:00. 70-80 is not gonna cut it. You'd need more like 100-125 miles a week, for many weeks at a time. Plus quality aerobic work. Most likely, you're not ready for that kind of training right now.

What a joke this post is!

Ok, yes, if you are not that talented you will need to run higher mileage than the talented person to achieve the same result. But that doesn't mean he should just start doing that. Over a long period of time it should be done.

15:44 in HS clearly indicates you have talent and indicates 25:00 is in the cards for you someday, without 120 miles a week.

Me:

16:20s in HS

26:45 freshman in college

Ran consistent 65 mile weeks with a 16 mile long run for about a year

25:15 the next year

That kind of jump can be made. Now I was seriously undertrained in HS and have been blessed with a lot of natural ability, but you can do it.

Exactly 25:00 freshmen year in college. Course was flat, fast and this was last meet before NCs. Started out the season running high 26s and can't say for certain, but don't think I was faster than 25:30 until this race. Other than not enough, can't tell you what I did that summer, but here was some of the in season stuff.

Tuesdays: 9 mile cut down tempo 1st 1/2 of season. Opened no slower than 6 minute pace and each mile faster than previous. Damn coach on mountain bike chasing us all the way. The real runners closed out this absolutely awful experience @ 5:15 pace or so. I sucked wind and survived. Coach shortened it to 6 miles in October. I'd take the hardest Saturday race over this workout any day.

Sundays: 10 miles informally with team. 60 minutes would be fast for this run, but we hit that # a few times and I would guess were within 5 minutes of it most other days. This was supposed to be an "easy" run, but never worked out that way.

Late season - 2 miles on track in trainers. 10:20ish. Full rest. 5k on wood chip trail in trainers sub 17:00. Full rest. 2 miles on track in spikes in 9:40ish. Our top 23.xx guys would cruise 9:45/sub 16/9:teens in this workout.

Run solid, consistent gradually progressive miles this summer. Push yourself prudently and go controlled hard every 10 days or so. Do your fair share of medium paced stuff and go to school fit and ready to go.

i'm not trying to run 2 flat, more like 25:30s, but the training is close enough.

goal race is mid october

plan is to continuously build mileage SLOWLY until the end of september, hopefully to ~100 mpw. started the summer around 60, currently around 75 with no workouts and a 13-14 mile long run.

long run will build to 16-18, slow usually with hills.

i'll start formal workouts in late august, probably just tempos until september. example would be 4-7 miles around 5:35/mi, but it could be faster or slower, i dunno yet.

last year i was doing 5:35-5:40 for tempos and i ran 26:10s

My next post will contain a link with an application to McDonald's....

You know, before the season starts.

fthat wrote:

If it takes someone 100+ miles to be able to run 25 min 8k they should consider doing another sport.

Ugh, this is the absolute dumbest sentiment. He should quit because he needs to run 11.5 hours a week instead of 9? That extra 25 minutes a day is a real dealbreaker, huh.

Focus on breaking 26. You said yourself that you haven't had consistent training in a few years. Do you think you can still run low/moderate mileage and then bust out a sub 25 off a 26:20 PR?

You sound like the classic dreamer. You get motivated by a big goal in the future, think of all the things you want/need to do but then forget about the present, only to under perform before embarking on the next dream goal.

Just train consistently and don't worry about pace. Let the fast running come to you and don't try and force things.

See lets run "why I sucked in College ".

I'm confident I will break 26 in the beginning of the season. Realistically I think I can go ~25:20 which is fine. I'm not asking to go sub 25, and I know 25 flat is a stretch but I just wanted to get some input on training.

I appreciate all the replies. I'm going to hit the rest of the summer hard. I'm not trying to force my training to match that of a 25 flat guy, but I was just curious to know what it looks like. I do plan to continually increase my intensity and mileage gradually until the season starts.

-Most workouts we did were threshold paced, which for me meant I was doing 8000-11000 meters of work (800s, 1ks, 12s, 16s, 2ks) @ 5:12 pace. These workouts weren't extremely challenging but they get the job done for cross country. On a lot of these workouts, he'd let us kind of hammer the last rep, so many times if I'd been running 9x1000 @ 3:10, the last one would be around 3:00 or under.

This is the best specific advice in this thread, and should be understood as an elaboration on the more general encouragements for you not to train like a 25-minute runner. There's no reason for you to blast anything these days, or to shoot for 2:25-2:30 800s in your repeat sessions. Plan long workouts at threshold pace with short jog recovery (10k of hard running is a good goal), long fartlek runs with bursts of varying distance thrown in, and some hill repeats (again, in the course of an 8 to 10-mile run). Something that's going to be really important is for you to finish your workouts, so pick a pace that feels controlled and sustainable early on, then stick the hell to it even when the going gets real tough in the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th kilometer. One more thing: drop the "indicator workout" superstition. I wish that whole idea would die off here at LR. Workouts aren't barometers, or proxies for races. Envision a training plan that progresses logically from where you are now; trust the plan; do the work; get faster; then race other people. Maybe you get in the right race on the right day and you nail your goal; maybe you don't. That's what this sport is. Good luck.