KayJR wrote:
ukathleticscoach wrote:
Already on 20mow what have you been doing for the past 5 years.
Intervals etc we great but you need more miles. Get back to us when you have done 40 miles a week for 6 weeks. 5 miles a day 10 miles once a week. Do whatever you want with Intervals as part of this but you need longer reps as well
Okay so over the next month I am going to build up to do a week like this:
Monday: 6.5 miles
Tuesday: 400 repeats (build up to 20- currently doing 10)
Wednesday: 7 miles
Thursday: 800 repeats (build up to 10- currently doing 6)
Friday: 6.5 miles
Saturday: recovery day
Sunday: 10 miles
That is what 40mpw would look like to me, I am scared to drop the workouts because I want to keep speed. I’m scared that if I only do milage that I’ll condition my body into going slow.
You're 5K time is slow because you are more concerned about your speedwork than your endurance. A 25:45 5K is 8:17 mile pace. You are running your 400m repeats faster than 7:00 pace. That's way too fast for your current fitness. In fact, that's even faster than your eventual goal pace of a 22 min 5K.
I'm also going to guess that you are running your mileage way too fast for your fitness level. Again, your current 5K pace is 8:17 so your mileage should be much slower than that. I'd recommend starting your runs around 12:00 mile pace and progressing down to about 10:30 pace by the end of the run. Yes, that is very slow, but your endurance is poor and you need to start somewhere. After a week or two the pace of your easy runs should naturally speed up. Pretty soon you'll be able to start the runs at 11:30 pace, finish at 10:00. Then pretty soon it will be 11:00 down to 9:30. You get the idea. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually (several months from now, don't rush it) your current 5K pace will become your easy pace.
You can keep the weekly 400m workout to work on turnover, but slow them down a bit. Replace the 800m repeats with a tempo run. For your current fitness that would be around 9:00 pace.