How to break through wall in 5k?

This happens to me as well. My interval/track race times do NOT correspond to my XC times. Any help would be appreciated!!

Runnnceee wrote:

Hard to explain, but I always tense up and run significantly slower in races than in practice. How do I break this cycle?

if you guys are both in high school, which I assume you are, you are probably racing your workouts and are not sharp come race day. It happens all the time with high school kids. It's much better to run your workouts slower, than run them faster and keep up with the fastest guys on the team or to lead all the workouts. Your workouts end up being your race/s for the week. You can also be running the first mile of your race entirely too fast. If you want to run a 16:30 but you go out and run a 5 min mile your first mile, you're going to be cooked. These are two extremely common problems for high school runners.

If you're not doing either of those things and you are in fact just tensing up come race day, then you need to learn to relax and just man up and race. You should be excited to race and excited to reap the rewards of your workouts. It is of course impossible to reap those rewards if you left them all in your workouts that week.

This is good advice. Don't race your workouts--leave your best running for the races. A couple ways to work on these things--treat race pace workouts as progressions or as current pace to goal pace sessions.

So if you are running 5X 1K, for example:

Maybe first rep at 10K pace (based on your actual recent 5K time), then do two at current 5K pace, and the final two at your goal pace. That way you are working toward a faster finish and it will feel almost "automatic" when you are racing.

I've always found that longer reps > shorter reps. The training guides tell us that 2-5 minutes at 5K pace for a 5K. 4X4 minutes is usually better than 8X 2 minutes.

Tempo runs or threshold reps, make sure you are doing these and based on current fitness (not goal fitness)--otherwise the effort might be too hard and you're racing the workout.

Run easier in practice and save it for the race.

All this comes down to is mental toughness really, just make sure that you're prepared before the race for some pain and the fact that it's gonna be hard to keep going fast. This will help a ton, play the race through in your head multiple times, even in practice sometimes.

Don't listen to Tanner, Bro. All you need is some Crossfit and a crossfit babe and you will be owning those fools.

Those obstacle races are tough, but you're supposed to go over the walls, not through them.

You're doing it wrong.

Your welcome.

It is hard to know what your problem is but the odds are it has NOTHING to do with mental toughness. Through HS my races were the most painful anyone ever saw. I had guys on the other teams asking if I was alright during races.

No one ever told me not to race my workouts, no one told me to run the first mile easier (I don't know if those would have worked) but finally I did enough training so that I could actually run a decent 10k or 10 miler and things quickly turned around and I dropped minutes off my XC times.

You don't get recoveries in a race

Ask the koolaid man. Oh yeah.

Most HS kids go out too fast in the first mile of a 5k XC race and then die. How much have you been slowing down after the first mile? Try to go out 10 to15 seconds slower that first mile and you will be surprised how much your 5k time improves.

You're lacking stamina. Do more tempo runs, fartleks, steady runs, and progression runs.

"give yourself permission" to go out 10-15 sec slower than you normally would for the first mile. Feel like you are running "slow", zone out, don't worry about the crowd, the other runners going past.. THEN crank it up over the next 2 miles.

I bet you are tensing up, getting out too quick and barely hanging on.

If you let yourself go out slow you can let go of pre-race jitters and all the hype that comes from racing.

Another thing to try is just find a runner that's of similar ability and JUST focus on running behind them (until the end). Whether it's a 300 person meet, or a dual, you make it out to be a 2 person race.

a lot of good advice on here. You need to be fully recovered for your target races and fairly recovered for your less important in-season races. So, get more sleep, hold back sometimes in workouts, and don't go out too hard in xc races unless there is a bottleneck just ahead where you won't be able to pass for a long way. I have actually had a lot of success in improving by pushing my workouts and running with faster people, but then there has to be slower pace on easy runs between them. Think about how far at race pace you are running in workouts and how much rest there is. You can bridge the gap by upping your mileage (gradually), doing tempo runs at 10-15 seconds per mile slower than race pace for equivalent distances, progressions starting easy and getting very fast the last couple miles, longer long runs that also get marathon pace the last 3-5 miles or more, and higher interval counts and/or shorter rests.

B