What am I doing wrong?

I'd recommend scheduling a "season" even though you're not on a team. Grab a book like Lydiard's Running To The Top and follow a schedule to peak for a goal race or two. RttT has example workouts within the weekly schedules...they'll be different depending on which "phase" of the schedule you're in...6x800m, 15x200m, or a 3k TT, for example.

Every workout should have a specific purpose, so it would be meaningless to give you a "good specific speed workout" for you to run on a random day.

So try to peak for some track races where I'd run unattached?

Try making a weekly schedule, slow down your easy days, increase mileage, and do 2 fartleks or tempos a day. Preferably wendsday and saterday, Monday long run at easy pace and youll be fine.

Do you do any strides?

Fcdcdcy wrote:

Do you do any strides?

Not really, I just started to again. I'm guessing that they're pretty important? And I'm not sure if I'm running my easy days to quickly. I just ran 17:30 for 5k and usually do my easy days around 7 min/mile pace.

Do some 1000s on the track once a week during break. Once a week during your tempo or fartlek runs, finish with 2 miles all out, pretend at 2 miles to go you have entered a race. Every other week do this 2 miles all out with 2 miles at or slightly slower than 10k pace in the preceding 2 miles.

confused1 wrote:

Fcdcdcy wrote:

Do you do any strides?

Not really, I just started to again. I'm guessing that they're pretty important? And I'm not sure if I'm running my easy days to quickly. I just ran 17:30 for 5k and usually do my easy days around 7 min/mile pace.

I run a bit slower than most on easy days--7:30-8:00 or slower as a sub-16 type--so I would recommend slower...but 7:00 isn't crazy fast or anything. The idea is to not put in effort that would otherwise be put into a fast day. If your fast stuff could be faster if your slow stuff were slower, slow the slow stuff down.

confused1 wrote:

So try to peak for some track races where I'd run unattached?

Yeah. Now that you're training on your own you get to decide which races you want to do well in. That might be a track race where you can drop a PR with some good competition, or a half/marathon that you can test yourself at, or the local road race in the town you went to HS in, where you're pretty sure that girl you want to impress will want to date the winner.

Sounds good, thanks for the advice. I think I'm definitely lacking speed because the other day a did an hour tempo run at 6:15 min/mile pace (granted it was a bit too hard for a tempo) but once I get down to like 5:30 pace it feels like a sprint. Like in the 5k today, I went out in 5:30 and that felt really really fast but it was weird because I had done some tempos at 6 min pace and they didn't feel too hard. I guess with not enough speedwork the jump for 6-5:30 pace is quite big.

Lydiard once wrote that the fastest any runner could go on a accurate, flat marathon course is just over 5'/mi. If you really want to learn something about training from Lydiard, I suggest you try to figure out why he was so completely wrong about his marathon prediction. What was he missing in his thinking and his calculation?

As for your training, you are not doing enough quality running. You are training with dedication but forgetting that 5000m is much more like a 4' time trial than a 40 mile time trial.

dsrunner wrote:

Lydiard once wrote that the fastest any runner could go on a accurate, flat marathon course is just over 5'/mi. If you really want to learn something about training from Lydiard, I suggest you try to figure out why he was so completely wrong about his marathon prediction. What was he missing in his thinking and his calculation?

As for your training, you are not doing enough quality running. You are training with dedication but forgetting that 5000m is much more like a 4' time trial than a 40 mile time trial.

So sounds like I need to be doing much more 5k specific work and fast paces too? Because right now, I'm sure I'd run a much better half marathon relative to my 5k time.

?

confused1 wrote:

dsrunner wrote:

Lydiard once wrote that the fastest any runner could go on a accurate, flat marathon course is just over 5'/mi. If you really want to learn something about training from Lydiard, I suggest you try to figure out why he was so completely wrong about his marathon prediction. What was he missing in his thinking and his calculation?

As for your training, you are not doing enough quality running. You are training with dedication but forgetting that 5000m is much more like a 4' time trial than a 40 mile time trial.

So sounds like I need to be doing much more 5k specific work and fast paces too? Because right now, I'm sure I'd run a much better half marathon relative to my 5k time.

Yes definitely more speed work, like dsrunner said you're running a race that's relatively short, nothing near a marathon that relies more on the aerobic system.