Running club runs in my "grey zone" pace

if there is any reality to this, or for the benefit of people with a similar actual problem, if you are not doing club races, who cares, it's just a way of getting social training, and you can take or leave it.

if you are doing club races, you sort out what the minimum practice requirement is to be aware what's going on, involved in carpool planning, and be entered and included in the races. and there may be a distinction between legal and practical, as in, they don't require you to make practice but if you never show you don't get entered in anything or factored into car planning.

you then make up your own training plan and factor the club minimum into that lesson plan. i don't think a tweener or two a week ruins a 20 min 5k person's training.

i still don't buy it. at 20 you're not fast enough to be second guessing anything other than perhaps being overtrained.

no, sorry, joe schmo out for a run does not call himself a hobby jogger. i have never heard the term used by anyone other than bob college who ran 14:30 while finishing 5th in conference, and who is perjoratively (ie dismissively) speaking of the other 99% of us not breathing that rarefied air, or is lamenting he now runs 16 and is falling back to earth. they are serious and run, we have a hobby and our rate is a jog. it's a condescension.

also, it doesn't help the OP that i was unfamiliar with college club running as someone in the official NCAA system, so i looked up some race times out of curiosity. my general impression was of JV level XC in my area, high 16s or low-mid 17s might win, plenty of people around 20, plenty worse than that. not being mean, but not even varsity numbers where i grew up.

as such, self deprecation would be attuned to the context. no one would be mocking themself for being mid-pack. but the OP is trying to make the troll come off by making the time sound ok enough where they might care about training. i don't buy it. i think if anyone thought the training soft or awkward it would be the 17:30 guys with aspirations. they also would be good and informed enough to know of alternatives. no one running a 20 would be thinking of this, this way.

What if the JV or rec league soccer player had aspirations to do better? He knows he isn't there now, but he wants to get there. And his only current experience is training for like a year and a half, but with a 3 month gap and a lot of inconsistency, and now he is wanting to stop the inconsistency stuff.

As far as "mocking themselves for midpack" thing goes, I knew I'd be mocked for that time here, so I just addressed it immediately. And for the 17:30 guys that's solidly an easy pace. I can keep it up for the 6 miles they run it, but it doesn't "feel easy"

It really depends on recovery. It's all about your ability to recover from the club runs. If the club runs drain you and you're left unable to get your workouts and foundation runs in than you may want to limit the number of clubs runs you're doing. If you're recovering and they're not impacting your workout and weekly mileage goals than don't worry about it and run with the club as much as you'd like.

My suggestion is to switch to a Bill Rogers type of training shedule.

This will enable you to fit in all club Runs and races while improving up to 2:09 marathon. You will not win the Olympics, but get good results.

Why are you talking about a 2:09 marathon? The vast majority of us will never run that. Is that just the upper limit to where the Bill Rogers stuff no longer works?

Marathon pace for training is not necessarily the pace you could actually run a marathon

Also, it kind of seems like you’re overthinking it.

Why don't you run with people in your group who run at your desired pace? I'm sure not everyone runs the leaders' pace.

I don’t understand why you’re convinced this is a troll post: nothing about it is funny, over-the-top, controversial or unbelievable—but you’re flirting with a good answer to the OP’s quandary here. “It’s a sophisticated complaint for an unsophisticated output.” It seems like the OP is too concerned with training guidelines he’s read on LetsRun/elsewhere and seriously overthinking it for his ability and, more importantly, his experience level. OP says he wants to make up for having not run in high school, but the fact is so many of us started out as 14 year olds running “too fast” in practice to keep up with the upperclassmen before we even thought about calculated training. And with all respect to the OP, 7:40 is slow enough that there’s a good chance that running that pace 2-3 days/week might very well be more beneficial than dinking around at 8:30 pace as a healthy 20ish year old male.

I'm getting the sense that all I need to improve significantly from where I am now is sustained consistency and some sort of challenging myself a couple times per week, and all this trying to get things just right can wait until I the consistency with some challenging stuff plateus.

I think that group runs are really fun. They can’t all be 17 min 5K. Groups usually break into smaller groups as the run progresses. Find someone your pace. If those runs don’t allow you to recover, then run on odd days and run your usual pace on even days. Getting better takes generally a long time but you will get better.

If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen

If this is their easy day, I doubt t you’re running with them in their workout days unless you are all on the track doing your own paces.

You totally could work this into your schedule to make this one of your workouts (with some more honest speed work for the other fast day). Some faster threshold is good (and you can do those on the track as intervals too if you set the reps and recovery right) but this marathon-ish effort is still useful work.

And that’s only if you do two workouts a week. If you do three them this is definitely one you can work in as one of the three. That said I’m too old for 3 Q days a week now but it’s not uncommon in programming.

You run 20 minutes for 5K. Stop worrying about "zones" so much and just go run with people and get in better shape and you will race faster.

if the club has several people perhaps some are in the same boat as you. draw up the courage to suggest a separate group that goes at a slower pace. say 8:30. certainly some people will take you up on that. there are other ways in the club to socially interact with the individuals who go faster. and i imagine that there should be little judgement regarding wanting to take a recovery run a little easier.

it's literally the definition of a tempo run. Hm to m pace. Literally the only "gray zone" is the small gap between m and easy run pace.

If it feels too easy you can also just run 6 miles beforehand and make the group run the progressive part of your long run. Or you can do a 1-2 miles at your hm pace and then jump into the group run to finish it as a long tempo.

Running grey zone most days is better training than running easy every day. Easy days are only important if you're actually doing real workouts 2-3 times per week. If someone runs 9:00 pace every day and someone runs 8:00 pace every day, the 8:00 pace person is probably going to race faster. Only if the 9:00 easy run person does fast workouts a lot faster than 8:00 pace a couple times per week would you expect them to beat the 8:00 daily person.

Summary, if OP is not doing workouts on other days, then who cares if you're in 'grey zone' on a group run.