What is the minimum running required to run sub 18 5k?

30-40mpw.

Hah! Now I’m curious. I suspect though that one of your goals may be to beat your HS time.

My coach, who is a big believer in heavier strength training, always has us run and then lift, as running is our primary focus. Maybe you could take that idea and do double workouts, like a run in the morning and a strength session in the evening? That would allow you a good amount of recovery in between workouts.

You might even be able to get away with less strength training, since it takes about 4-6 weeks of no stimulus before you lose strength. However, running will cause you to lose strength and muscle mass faster and more easily than normal, so you'll have to eat extra and stay on top of nutrition.

Im not sure how attainable your goal is, but I have seen very built athletes run considerably faster, albeit at a younger age. Good luck!

Better questions would be:

1) At what weight X does my time equal Y. If you show a consistent trend downwards in time after dropping weight, but not changing your running load Z, then you'll understand that the limiting factor is your body weight.

2) If you increase your running load Z without changing your weight X, meaning your diet isn't adjusting and is instead just compensating, and you see no improvement in Y, then your weight is probably your limiting factor and not how much you run.

3) If you decrease weight X, increasing load Z, and see a decrease in Y, then your limiting factors were your weight and your mileage.

4) If you decrease X and increase Z and Y increases, then you're overtraining.

The key is that it has to be tailored to how your body responds.

Sentence #2 is spot-on. I see people on LRC (and Strava) moaning about..."I only ran 17:xx/36:xx/1:21:xx/2:53:xx" etc. without realizing most of the general pop will never see 26:59/49:59/1:55/4:00....

Thanks for the kind words! (I am 40, but still feel much younger at times).

Thanks!

Yes, that's what I'm thinking.

Today I lifted in the morning and did intervals on the rower in the afternoon.

Tomorrow I will lift in the morning and run 30 mins easy in the afternoon.

I'm still currently focusing on gaining size and strength while just getting myself used to running a bit.

Once I'm done with that, in (probably) 6 weeks, I will switch to lifting just enough to maintain strength, which will take considerably less time.

This is an interesting way to look at it.

Maybe I'll run a 5k in 6-7 weeks soon after I finish this strength cycle.

By then, I'll have been consistently running 2-3 days per week but will weigh 200-205#.

It'd be interesting to see if the running was enough to offset 5-10 pounds of weight gain (I was 196 the day I ran the 5k.)

Scenario 1 is really interesting to me: Just lose weight and keep my running the same.

That said, I will do scenario 3 once I'm done with this strength cycle.

6-7 days a week @ minimum 60 miles/week otherwise forget it. If you aren’t willing to put in the work you will never reach your goals.

Given you went low 20 on little training I think it is def possible. As others have said there are multiple ways to crack 18 in a 5K. The most accurate and relevant data on how you can do it on minimal miles is most likely your very own training logs from the past. You are going to need to experiment, see how you respond, and pick some predictive workouts to gauge your progress. It will be a fun challenge. Good luck!

I broke 18 in a time trial before freshman year on no training. So the answer to the question is that no training is required for talented runners.

You'll need to experiment a bit what works for you.
I would start with 20-30 min easy followed by 4-8 strides (start slow and progressively accelerate over 15-20 seconds, always keeping your form in control. Never reach top speed, the risk of injury is high if you overdo these, slower is better, especially at the beginning. Get full recovery every time. They should feel very easy).
Make the long run progressively longer until you can run for 80 minutes. I don't think you need much more than this. At the end of the long run you should not be completely exhausted, but rather feel like you could have run another 10-20 minutes, if you had to. Once you improve, you can try finishing the long run with a few minutes at a slightly faster pace.
The hard session could be an easy run for 10 minutes and then 5 minutes at 10K pace followed by 2 minutes easy and repeat 2 times, then three, then four.
If you handle this fine, after a little bit you may start replacing the easy+strides with warmup+hills and the "hard session" can become 10 minutes +2 min + 10 minutes at a slightly slower pace, until you can run 20 minutes continuosly at HM-10K pace.
Finally, once you are comfortable with running faster paces, you can start to substitute hills with repeats on the track.

Good luck!

With your talent 3 sessions per week will take you to your first goal sub 19 min quite fast in some months. All you need is some magic like this:

Session 1. Run easy(70-75 % of mhr) up to 60 min

Session 2. Run interval 12-20 x 300- 400m at current 5 k race pace , rest between reps easy walking back to 120 bpm pulse( or 60 % mhr)

Session 3. Run lactate threshold interval to a total of 3-5 miles at beginning and over time work up to 6-8 miles total,pace around half marathon pace .Rest between reps 600m- 1600m will be easy walking back to pulse 120 bpm or about 60 % of max heartrate if you know it.Now let's see.... it would be around 20 mpw at most! 😲

You can thank me after.😁 )) 🇸🇪🧙🏼‍♂️🇸🇪😎🖐🙂🖐

The Magic Wizard J.S

I can't tell if you're trolling or not.

There is zero chance that running a sub 18 min 5k requires 6-7 days of running and 60+ MPW.

Yea, same.

But I weighed ~100# at the time.

With my current fitness level, I have no doubt I could break 18 very quickly if I only weighed ~150#.

Awesome.

I really appreciate this response.

Thank you, Magic Wizard, Sir!

It obviously depends on the person. There is no actual requirement other than in what you should be able to do at the shorter distances.

I.E. An 18 minute 5K at a bare minimum means you should be able to comfortably running the following shorter distances at the paces shown. If your shorter distances aren't able to reach all of the following paces then you're either not training enough or don't have the bare speed needed yet. Speed may mean doing more weight training workouts to build power and explosiveness.

1K
3:36
1 mile
5:48
3K
10:48
3 miles
17:23
400 meters
1:26
800 meters
2:53

To expand on my post, my rule, the Olmstead Law, is the following:

You should be able to run the 800 at least 3% faster than the time shown.

400 - 1.5% faster

1 mile - 8.3% faster

3K - 10% faster

UPDATE

I'm running a 5k on Sunday the 17th and would like some opinions on what pace I should target based on some recent interval workouts.

After a case of shin splints in late January after I tried to increase running to 3x/wk, I stopped running altogether for 2 weeks.

For the past 5 weeks, I've only run once per week. Either an interval workout or a tempo run. I've also done 30-60mins of Z1/Z2 on the bike/rower 4-5 days per week.

Here are the last two workouts:

1. 6x800m with 2:30 standing rest. Done on a treadmill so all done in exactly 3:00. This was done 8 days ago. Felt really good and not that hard. HR was 160-165 at end of each and recovered to 100-105 by start of next.

2. 3x400m with 100m jog, 1:20 (whoops), 1:30, 1:30, then 400m jog

3x400m with 200m jog, 1:26, 1:25, 1:26, then 400m jog

3x400m with 400m jog, 1:20, 1:20, 1:17.

This was all done on a track. Jogs were 10+ min pace. Total of 4 miles of continuous running and felt good and controlled. I wanted to blow out that last 400m but restrained myself.

My goal for this 5k was to break 19, but now I kind of want to go out at 6-minute pace and see if I can maintain that. Is that reasonable based on these two workouts? Would going out at 6:00 pace be too aggressive?