Goal 5K pace intervals at the beginning of a training cycle?

Question: should you jump right into doing 800m - 1600m repeats at your goal 5K pace if your current 5K time is about a minute slower than your goal time? Or should you start out doing intervals a little slower than your goal race pace until you can sustainably hit e.g. 6 x 1K at your goal pace?

Context: I'm trying to break 16:00 in the 5K, and right now I'm capable of hitting about 17', or just under. Mileage has been around 55 mpw for a couple months, with one day of intervals and hill work and another for long runs in the 13-16 mile territory. But I haven't been too focused on running at my goal 5K pace; instead I'm just doing the intervals by feel and/or heart rate. Should I focus on the pace, instead of the effort, given that now I have a target pace in mind?

I hope, for your sake, that you will get better-informed responses than mine, but I thought I would reply because I just happened to be reading a possibly relevant comment by Renato Canova:

"During winter, I use normal workouts of long intervals for increasing Aerobic Power (5-6 x 2000m in 5:40 for an athlete able running, in full season, 5 x 2000m in 5:20), with 3 > 2 min recovery, alternating with sessions where I use "long intermittent training", where I already use the speed of summer with short recoveries (for example, 5 sets of 5 x 400m in 63/64 with 20.0 of rest between tests, and 4/5 min between sets). In this way, I always have in my programs the "specific speed" that I want to train. In other terms, I use the final volume of training at lower percentage (may be 92 > 95 %, in the example of 2000m, 5:40 is 94% of 5:20 like intensity), and the final intensity that I want to build with many intervals, reducing step by step the duration of recovery."

So, if we suppose (just as an example) that your final preparation would feature a workout something like 5 x 1k at goal 5k pace (for you, about 3:10), you might spend time earlier in your training cycle alternating workouts of 5 x 1k at about 3:30 (3:00 recovery to start, working down to 2:00 later on) and workouts of 5 sets of 5 x 200 in 38 with very short recovery between repeats and 4-5 minutes between sets.

It's an interesting idea...

Goal 5K pace intervals at the beginning of a training cycle?

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