Sub 15.30 5k Off <40 MPW

you aren't listening old man. i run consistently in the 15.50s off 35-45 miles per week, but i run my ez days real ez. after descriptions i may try a few months of running the ez days harder. i fully understand there almost an infinite number of other unknowable variables.

i am not going base my entire running philosophy of a few posts. it is simply interesting data, especially ghost's posts. the guy with the foot problems could have had 2 years of 100mpw before he went to low mileage. i am taking it all with a grain off salt.

you either an arrogant know-it-all or a good troll.

low mileage runner wrote:

you either an arrogant know-it-all or a good troll.

I am neither. I post only on subjects that I do know about though, and this is one. It is always a silly question when one asks one such as yours, and it happens all too often on this site. Why anyone's information provided here will get you to change your training is beyond me. Each of those runners is different than you, so what they did to achieve sub 15:30 should make no difference.

Has anyone here benched 300 pounds by lifting weights just 2 times a week? That's the kind of question you asked. The answers to that question can't possibly give you any useful information.

Now that you've provided your ability level (15:50s on 35-45 miles per week), I know that your question really was in hopes of getting an answer that you could implement. It's foolhardy. You are hoping that because someone else did it that you can to. BUT, you don't know their talent level. That's the big if here.

If you came in and said you've been running 35-45 miles per week and running only 15:50s and asked what you could possibly do to get down to 15:30s, the vast majority of people would tell you to up your mileage. That you want to run less than you have been (less than 40 per week, never more than 40), most people here would tell you that your hope is hopeless. I'm one of them; unless you were just jogging all of your runs at 9 minute pace or something and never doing any other types of workouts.

With your approach, I'm telling you now that you will fail. Those who did it on minimal running did it because they have greater talent than you do -- not a put down -- just a fact. You want to run 15:30, then your best shot is to add more mileage, not to ask silly questions.

Flagpole wrote:If you're interested in the training, then just throw any pedestrian time up there (and 15:30 is pedestrian in the grand scheme of things)...

While true for serious, competitive runners, 15:30 would probably win 90-95% of all local 5K road races in this country.

It all depends on your POV. 15:30 guys are among the major studs in the vast majority of running clubs and probably in the top 2% of all road race participants in this country. Run it in high school and you'll likely have some scholarship offers (not DI, but somewhere).

"Pedestrian" by the lofty standards of our little niche on here, but certainly not "in the grand scheme of things." What that says about the state of our sport, I don't know.

I wish we could ban flagpole, the ultimate attention whore, for life. A high number of threads end up being about him.

That said, many many runners can do that. But the OP was asking for specifics. I ran 15:30s +/- and mid-low 32s for 10K on 40 to 50 mpw back in my late 20s and early 30s. No fancy training, really. One caveat though, is that I cross trained with xc skiing most years and would put in some pretty solid volume (8-12 hr/week) for 2 or 3 months during the winter.

Here's how it would go:

Spring/transition (6 weeks) - build from 10-15 to ~40 miles/week easy running; long run 10-12 miles

Late spring (6 weeks) add specific workouts (e.g., reps at 5K pace 1X week, striders-drills 1X week, tempo runs 1X week or two); maintain mileage or increase to 45-60 for a few weeks; weekly long run of 12 to 14 or 15 miles.

Peak (6 weeks) - drop back down to 40 mpw, do 3 hard workouts/week, including races about every week or two (1 mile to 10K). Typical workouts would be 3 to 3.5 miles of reps at 5K pace, closing faster than pace; 1 to 2 miles of reps at mile pace, usually fartlek type workouts on the grass; 4 to sometimes 5 miles of reps at 10K pace, if I had a 10K coming up; occaisional tempo run; maintain weekly mid-length longish runs of 10 or 11 miles. Everything else was easy recovery running at 7:30 to 8:00 pace.

I'd then take 4 weeks of recovery, active rest and easy running and then ramp up for another 6-8 weeks for cross country.

Final caveats, in my early-mid 20s I did put in more mileage (70s to 100s); and if I could do the early 30s again, I'd have spent at least part of the year doing more mileage and running longer races (maybe fall half or full marathon).

Guard Duck wrote:

While true for serious, competitive runners, 15:30 would probably win 90-95% of all local 5K road races in this country.

It all depends on your POV. 15:30 guys are among the major studs in the vast majority of running clubs and probably in the top 2% of all road race participants in this country. Run it in high school and you'll likely have some scholarship offers (not DI, but somewhere).

"Pedestrian" by the lofty standards of our little niche on here, but certainly not "in the grand scheme of things." What that says about the state of our sport, I don't know.

I said, "in the grand scheme of things...". The grand scheme of things must include professional runners. 15:30 would win more than 95% of all local 5ks -- probably closer to 99%. I never said it wasn't fast for a local runner, but local runners are just that -- local.

I wish we could ban people who don't know how to answer a question. The question is stupid to begin with, but then when he was asking if you've ever done it on LESS THAN 40 MPW, you not only tell him no but then proceed to give him a schedule that includes several weeks at 60 miles per week.

Even if you had stayed within the requested parameters it would not have been good information, but since you did it without staying within the parameters, it is even worse -- just a waste of your time to type it all out -- except that you got to crow a little about running 15:30s (which isn't sub 15:30 even), so I guess that was your motivation.

good stuff AK-50, thanks for info.

Flagpole, aren't you old, bald, and fat? that would go along way in explaining your posts.

low mileage runner wrote:

Flagpole, aren't you old, bald, and fat? that would go along way in explaining your posts.

Old, bald, and fat are all relative terms. I'm 42 and don't have as much hair as I did when I was 22. Am I fat? Compared to one of the Olsen twins yes. Compared to Jim Belushi or Dwight Schrute, nope.

If though it were determined I was old, fat, and bald, none of those things would preclude me from correctly determining that your original question couldn't possibly return valuable information.

I'm usually around 40 MPW at the high end. I'm not sure what I do different than anyone else except that I get bored going for a lot of runs.

Anyway, I hit just under 15:10 last year outdoors, and 15:25ish right after a mile.

More of a 800/miler though, so I don't know whats up

Flagpole you're a dick and a drag on this forum. Nobody here likes you, but you've still been hanging here for years. Go away. Maybe if enough people start speaking out you'll actually get the hint or the brojos will just ban you because they should and it would be the right thing to do.

There's not a big difference between 39 and say 42 miles per week. And there's no big chain that says oops! you went 49 miles that week--out of the question. I gave an honest overview of using moderate mileage, with some variation and caveats, to attain a certain level. No crowing either--my PRs are way way down on the Scatman's PR list.

All this aside, I had a friend many years ago who ran well under 40 mpw and put up some pretty amazing times--(sub 29 for 10K, 1:01 for 20K, etc.). Now he was truly talented. He'd run only 4-5 days a week, with one longish run (10-12 miles, an interval sesson on the turf (golf courses etc) such as alternating 300s and 600s, and a couple short (4-6 miles) fast (probably sub 5 pace) runs that today we'd call tempos for someone of his ability.

DuBose wrote:

I'm usually around 40 MPW at the high end. I'm not sure what I do different than anyone else except that I get bored going for a lot of runs.

Anyway, I hit just under 15:10 last year outdoors, and 15:25ish right after a mile.

More of a 800/miler though, so I don't know whats up

what were staples of your training?

Early in 2008 I ran my PR of 15:11 in the 5k off of a consistent 40 miles per week(low side)and then tacked on a 15:19 a few weeks later.

During this time I also ran 54:03 for 10 miles pretty comfortably. The only "workouts" I did were a tempo every now and again.

I have since bumped my mileage up to the mid 50's and have begun adding speedwork hoping to run in the 14's during the upcoming track season.

Most people who do this are just doing it off running 40 miles a week as we would structure a normal training week...

I'm sure that it is more than possible to run 15:30 off under 40 miles a week- but it'd take a lot of hard work and you'd be nailing just about every run. Thinking about it if you ran near flat out for 3 miles every morning and every evening you would have 42 miles in a week.

Would be a bloody tough training schedule though but would probably if you had some level of talent get under 15:30 for 5k.

AK-50 wrote:

Flagpole you're a dick and a drag on this forum. Nobody here likes you...

False. And you're arguing with a guy who you know little to nothing about on an anonymous internet forum about something that really requires no argument. In summary, grow the f*** up. You don't have to be right, and you're doing nothing but create needless angst with posting like this.

I'll chime in

I averaged about 45 (i know it's not less than 40mpw, but I think you'll forgive me) miles per week this past season and I ran high 14s.

Typical week:

sun - long run

mon - easy run

tuesday - short intervals/vo2 max kinda stuff

wed - easy run

thurs - easy run OR 1000s/1200s

fri- easy or day off

sat - tempo/race

ps - My easy days were very, very slow - like 8/9 minute pace. However, dont think that I was screwing around. I wasn't. I was training SMART not "hard". I was simply running as fast as i could without having to push it (the point of an easy day). It just happened to be that that pace was usually in the 8-9 minute range.

My senior year in cross I had an oblique fracture in the 5th metatarsal. I was out for 7 weeks, then slowly started running again. I ended up running a 15:28 PR to better my previous PR of 15:38. A sample week looked like this:

Monday: 10 miles with 2.5 warmup and 2.5 cooldown, the workout totaled 5 miles including the recovery if there was one. Example: 5 mile steady state or miles 1,3,& 5 hard with miles 2,3@ 7 minute pace

Tuesday: 5 miles recovery

Wednesday: same as monday

Thursday: 5 miles

Friday: 5 miles

Saturday: RACE

Sunday: 5 miles

My race progression was like this: 16:30 5K, 15:50 5K, 8:59 3K, 4:13 1500, and then 15:28 5K

I don't consider myself a runner with a lot of talent, but I'm just giving my example to show that 15:30 5k can be done off of 40 miles a week, especially if you have ran close to that before.

Didn't Gabe Jennings only run 35MPW in the spring of his senior year because he was burnt out from the Olympics and stress from school and was still running 1:47 for 800???

When I ran 15:17.4 for 5000 track (cinders) in 1978, most of my runs were at around 7 minutes per mile, but I would finish most runs at around 6.30 per mile and sometimes down to 6 minutes per mile or just under. I never approached the 'goal pace' in training, but thanks to frequent racing in England (all comers meets and weekly races) - got used to reasonable pace during those races, and was able to translate that to respectable time.

But in those days, 15:17 for 5000 was nothing, because you would go to the Crystal Palace for an all comers meet, and you would have a guy like Peter Standing run 13:56 for 5000 after a full day of work as a landscape gardener in Sussex. Those were the days, and we may never see them again in the UK.

Ray Marriott (SLH) ended up running 14:39 for 5000, and 3:59 for 1500, but did not have much speed, but thanks to intense intervals at Croydon Arena, improved a lot. For years before doing intervals, he was stuck at around 16 minutes for 5000. Specificity suited him.

Ghost in Saudi,

www.kfupm.edu.sa

letsrun.com wrote:

AK-50 wrote:

Flagpole you're a dick and a drag on this forum. Nobody here likes you...

False. And you're arguing with a guy who you know little to nothing about on an anonymous internet forum about something that really requires no argument. In summary, grow the f*** up. You don't have to be right, and you're doing nothing but create needless angst with posting like this.

Right. And why has there been a spate of ban flagpole threads in recent months? No doubt it's best to ignore him, but he does have a tendency to interject himself, and high opinion thereof, into a large proportion of threads. He annoys a lot of people here.