How long will it take to improve my 5k time to sub-20?

How did you find out about this site?

Nobody can say for sure. There aren't enough points on the graph yet to create a trend line. All you can do - and this is true of anyone, really - is train hard, and see what happens. Hopefully you enjoy it.

Ask who the troll is on team and let them guide your training plan.

Remember the most important thing is fuel. You can't run without fuel. The more fuel the faster you run. Making sure you get enough sugar in your system through constant eating. Anything it all helps.

0/10

You will start seeing your progression level as soon as you do a few more races. If you drop minutes per race things will be more promising.

12 minutes

You probably just have to wait honestly. Keep it consistent, and do exactly what your coach says. My freshman year I ran the following chronologically:

20:18

20:18

18:39

18:26

18:08

It's your first year, so what happens with 97% of first year runners is that it takes a little time to get into shape; however, once you're in shape, your potential will do the rest (and yes, even though you run a 32:xx 5k, you do have potential). The seniors my freshman year were all breaking 17 at the end of the season, and they ran 24:xx-28:xx their freshman years. Just keep working.

Conundrum wrote:

How did you find out about this site?

I found out about it on Google lol

Did I call troll too soon?

Conundrum wrote:

Ask who the troll is on team and let them guide your training plan.

Remember the most important thing is fuel. You can't run without fuel. The more fuel the faster you run. Making sure you get enough sugar in your system through constant eating. Anything it all helps.

0/10

If you're not a troll, then sorry. You used correct punctuation and you were fairly articulate. Most kids your age don't post like that.(If you are a troll, then 11/10 for making me feel bad about my other posts.)

JustStartedRunning wrote:

I found out about it on Google lol

Conundrum wrote:

If you're not a troll, then sorry. You used correct punctuation and you were fairly articulate. Most kids your age don't post like that.

(If you are a troll, then 11/10 for making me feel bad about my other posts.)

I'm not a troll, I'm just more mature than most of my peers. This year is my junior year of high school and I've only run one 5k (missed the last two due to shin splints and then a back injury, but hopefully get to run another tomorrow). I was too scared to join cross country in freshman and sophomore year because I thought I would do really bad, and while I am doing really bad, I finally stopped caring about what others thought.

Also, I was wondering how to pace myself better. I think the best way to improve my time is to do more training, but I feel like pacing myself better could help me get to sub-30 easily. I ran too hard the first mile because I tried to stay at the front/middle of the runners, but that caused me to run out of breath for the rest of the race.