Sub-20 5k or bust!

The Geezer has just acknowledged that he is cheating. Geezer, you cannot stop for 15 seconds like that and try to make it legit the way you did. Appreciate your honesty though.

Please, please get some new shoes. It is a small investment in your running health and your feet and legs will thank you...

I have only once ever had a problem with my feet, 25+ years ago, from training accelerations in a concrete parking garage...in brand-new shoes.

I’ll stick with the old pair.

I think running form has everything to do with saving your feet. Mine feel perfect, I see no reason to change just yet.

Did 30 mins warmdown on a stationary bike yesterday, and it made my butt sore. No more bike after running for me! If i need more, I will just jog.

Yeah, well, nobody’s perfect.

Man, looking back on yesterday, sub-20 seems a million miles away.

I'm thinking of it in terms of needing to gain 150 seconds, somehow that makes it seem easier because I can chip away at it.

You geezers running 17, etc.--amazing. I sometimes wonder what I could run if I lost 40-50 lbs, but no way would I ever try.

Must feel pretty damn good to run a 15-17min 5k!

Sprintgeezer -- So your weekly training consists of one 5K time trial with no warmup, some stationary bike work, a few strides, and lifting? Will you eventually enter a race on a certified course to go for the sub-20? Do you have a target date?

I'm a bit older, but also hope to run sub-20 this autumn. At present, that seems unreachable, as the wheels seem to have completely fallen off during the past eight months.

My present woes started with a couple injuries, followed by months of down time. Now it seems the fitness is simply not coming back.

You ran 10:00 for two miles as a sprinter? Wow, I became a distance runner a because I had no speed and no agility, but I never ran 2-miles that fast! I also never broke 16:00 for 5K in my 20s, didn't break 17:00 in my 40s, and barely broke 19:00 in my 50s (18:58 at 57).

So we'll see about sub-20 at age 60. Perhaps unlikely, but I haven't given up. Got under 9-minute miles for a hard run today!

Good luck.

I ran that 9:58 when I was 17 years old, and did pretty much the same thing every gym class. I could have gone even faster.

When I first started out in t&f as a micro-kid, I won everything except the 400/800, including the 100, so I ended up in a big deal track club. They stuck me in the 800! I hated it. I would dog it, then sprint the last 100m or so. Never did well in an 800 in a meet, but continued to crush the 100, lol

HS gym class we would run 2 miles every time, even in winter. I kind of liked it in warmer weather, and hated it in winter. That 9:58 was timed on some random day, and I wasn't even the fastest, there were 2 guys ahead of me.

Maybe my best race would have been the 800 had I trained for it and cared, who knows. All I know is that I was winning 100's, so why do anything else.

Yes, that is basically my "training" at the moment, along with serious stretching 2x/week. I also do random accelerations, probably to the tune of 60-80 per week, whenever I can--in a hallway, on a driveway, you name it, I just grab the opportunity. Keeps me mechanically interested. I can't help it, it's like a dog chasing a car.

I do my 5k's on a "certified course", it is an out-and-back course on which a race is run, but you are right, I may be slightly under or, as I suspect, slightly over. If I get close to 20, or at least around 21, I will hit the track and do a perfect 5000m, and find out. I figure the course is close enough, and as long as I run the same route every time, it's the progression that matters.

My thing is that I like heat, and lots of it. I only start feeling good around 85, feel in the zone from 95-105, and get cerebral above that, so my climatic window is limited. Will I do an actual race? I doubt it, I don't like the road race environment, and I don't feel like paying to run on a bunch of streets. I would do a track race, but let's face it, even if I get to 20:00, that sucks. I would see no point in doing an official race, when I can just go to the track myself and get the same timing quality over the same distance. Yes I understand that in a race I could draft, if I found the right situation, and that might pull me to a faster time, but to be honest, I'm not interested in running the fastest 5k I can, I just want to develop some fitness and have some fun. If I was serious, I would be going about it in a completely different way--for instance, the first thing I would do would be to lose a ton of weight, and that's not going to happen.

I like my program. My weights are killer, I feel great, no injuries, I feel like I'm going fast and developing some aerobics in my 5k's, all of my flexibility (which has always been great) is back, and I get to mix it up with hard bike rides, and even some rowing sessions on the erg.

What got me going on this was some thread that reported that Brett Kavanaugh ran a faster 5k time than what I was running. First of all I don't believe it, second of all I couldn't let that stand. My latest was 22:29, and I'm pretty sure I can go 22:00, which I believe beats his alleged time. 20:00 would destroy his time, I think, and that would be a solo effort with no drafting. I'm not sure why I care, but just as a general fitness matter, there's no way I could let that guy be better than me at any distance...or maybe even anything, including 1-on-1. Petty? Probably. Motivating? Absolutely.

I'm past the point of caring about my times. 2 or 3 years ago now I was no longer up with the lead guys in local 100m races, and I find geezer races weird, and it would be weird to enter them and just win, with not much competition. But show me someone faster than me who I feel I should be better than, and that's it. No way.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

... Yes I understand that in a race I could draft, if I found the right situation, and that might pull me to a faster time, but to be honest, I'm not interested in running the fastest 5k I can, I just want to develop some fitness and have some fun. If I was serious, I would be going about it in a completely different way--for instance, the first thing I would do would be to lose a ton of weight, and that's not going to happen. ...

But show me someone faster than me who I feel I should be better than, and that's it. No way.

OK, I get it. But, truly, with your latent talent, even minimal "serious" training would likely get you 18-flat. And that's at 177 pounds. I'm the same weight, currently, but don't have your natural talent; I'll definitely need to drop 8 or 10 pounds to go sub-20.

Yeah, the track is best for your final time trial. As for races, it's the competition that would result in a faster performance, not so much "drafting." You obviously have a strong competitive drive, and would benefit from the "racing" aspect.

For me, there's probably always been a 30-second difference between an all-out solo time trial and running in an actual 5000m race.

“Talent”, lol. Thanks, but no. I run, as they say on LR, “on pure hate”.

I just go hard, harder than anyone I know. I just see red. With this 5k stuff I’m purely internal, all I know is how I feel. I may as well be running in a totally dark anechoic chamber, on a treadmill.

The ability to go hard is really my only athletic talent, along with hopefully taking the best of what I see in the best athletes, and incorporating it.

I’m pretty sure there’s no way I could survive an 18-min 5k at 177 lbs. Seriously.

Hey sprint, we're in a similar boat. I've had many years off from running and I've just returned. I wasn't a couch potato, I was lifting weights throughout my "break".

I'm mostly doing aerobic training to get back into general fitness. I ran my first 5K road race after a month of random runs and got 24:07 minutes. I would like to get under 20 minutes also. I'm currently doing around 15 MPW. I feel pretty good running 9:15 pace atm. I was even thinking of starting my own thread for shits and giggles, with all of my amateur training. I'm 150 lbs atm and could stand do lose 10 pounds if I REALLY wanted to drop my times, but I don't want to lose any muscle.

"...and even some rowing sessions on the erg."

I'm amused--the only real exercise I'm getting right now are rowing workouts on a C2 erg. What kind of erg are you using + what's you typical rowing workout?

Yep, I don’t want lose muscle, either. Actually, I might gain 5 lbs over the next 6 months. A bit of muscle feels good.

And yes, that’s why I started this thread, just to keep an informal training log. It’s fun to hear that sub-20 seems to be a common goal.

dkny64 wrote:

"...and even some rowing sessions on the erg."

I'm amused--the only real exercise I'm getting right now are rowing workouts on a C2 erg. What kind of erg are you using + what's you typical rowing workout?

Rowing is great. Although I will on occasion go for 30 mins, I usually just integrate two 5-minute rows into a weight workout, both at 10 resistance on a C2, and I usually do 1350-1400m for each 5-min row.

You can really train lactate if you row hard, holy crap. Strangely, my half-hour sessions aren’t much slower pace, overall—I start slower, but finish faster, maybe around 1:45-1:48 pace for the last maybe 2 minutes. Must be lactate clearance or something

Did the 5k at moderate to heavy effort but not all out, as I'm saving myself for the 'thon. Was doing it mainly as a fitness check to see where I was at at 5k relative to my HS days (17 years ago).

I've lost a lot of speed, but didn't run at all from '08 to '17.

Jumped into a few halfs over the past few years but now am shooting for a full this fall.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

dkny64 wrote:

"...and even some rowing sessions on the erg."

I'm amused--the only real exercise I'm getting right now are rowing workouts on a C2 erg. What kind of erg are you using + what's you typical rowing workout?

Rowing is great. Although I will on occasion go for 30 mins, I usually just integrate two 5-minute rows into a weight workout, both at 10 resistance on a C2, and I usually do 1350-1400m for each 5-min row.

You can really train lactate if you row hard, holy crap. Strangely, my half-hour sessions aren’t much slower pace, overall—I start slower, but finish faster, maybe around 1:45-1:48 pace for the last maybe 2 minutes. Must be lactate clearance or something

Interesting--I would have guessed you'd be taking a more sprint-focused approach to rowing [1 minute pieces or 10 stroke repeats building to max pace or some such]. Also a bit sad for me since all I'm doing right now is C2 [because of a lingering injury that's keeping me from running] and I'm just not close to those paces. At my rowing best seven years ago I was under 7:20 for 2k, but my recent 2k best is just under 7:46, and at this point in my life [turning 55 in a few weeks], I'm not sure I have the VO2 max or pain tolerance to make a serious push to get back under 7:20 for 2k.

Anyway, my best guess, given your size and rowing speed, is that 5k in 18:20 on a C2 should translate into 5k in 20 flat running if you put some genuine effort into the running 5k thing.

Today 22:18 in 7th workout.

Tried for the same as last time, but went 10 secs faster, so pretty good.

Felt harder today, though. This time I stopped for 15 secs at about 4k to take my pulse...and my HR was 172-176!

My max HR has always been high, and I wasn’t maxxed, but I was going decently hard.

Hit treadmill afterward for a bunch of intervals and 10 mins at 10% grade to work on footstrike.

Yeah, I have often been better at rowing than at distance running. I can hit big numbers if I try, but I don’t really care. Running is more appealing!

I think I need to lengthen my running stride. Also, when running 5k, where are you guys looking? Sometimes I look forward and up, but find that I lean back and my stride shortens. Sometimes I look at the fround maybe 20 feet ahead of me with my head down a bit, that seems more efficient. I did that for the last k today and my HR went down.

There’s so much stride mechanic involved in running...and rowing is much more upper body...that IDK if there is much correlation to running. In the VO2 numbers required maybe, but not how you generate them, or how you use them.

I feel that I might hit a wall somewhere at 21:xx, that represents my natural, untrained (but fit) ceiling. To go faster than that I might need to put in some actual training that makes sense. Of course being a sprinter I’m looking to do the minimum. What if I just fold in a weekly “easy long run” for 1 hour, maybe doing 10k, in addition to my now twice-weekly 5k’s?

So hope this helps and do enjoy following your efforts.

Here is what I recommend you do and why. First the why. You got plenty of speed. You need better endurance which means you are going to have to do more miles but should do them really slow because like I said you have plenty of speed.

The rapid progress is good but you know you are hitting a plateau. You already figured this out you. If you were hitting 20:30 or so you could just grind it out. But 22 is 10 seconds a lap too slow . You are going to need to do some slow stuff.

I recommend doing super slow stuff . You can use an elevated tread mill or just jog on soft surfaces . Start at 20 minutes per day every day until you can do this easily then add 10 minutes and repeat until 40 minutes daily is easy. This type of training worked for me . Just train the f out of your slow twitch fibers with time on your feet jogging and they will really help out when running fast with fatigue resistance. The slow stuff will also give your 2a fibers better endurance. Only problem is you will have to go backwards until daily 40 minute easy runs are easy. Then KaBoom sub 20 the easy way.

I do have recent first hand experience at doing this, sub 20 5k over age 60.

Grain of Salt: I am not a sprinter. I am more of a mid d type.

Exec summary used 2xweek Hiit got close after 6 months 2 miles in 12 flat on tread mill.

Next 18 months got now where start going backwards using Hiit.

Six months of LSD broke 20 four more months with some speedwork down to 19:05 and feel pretty good.

Details:

At age 60 got to sub 20 shape after 6 months starting at outofshape. doing 2xweek hiit trng.

I ran 12 flat for 2 miles 10 mph treadmill 1.5 grade which is sub 20.

Stalled out worked hard for another year and nada . I hit a plateau that was starting to look like a descent the harder I hiit the slower I got injury burn out.

After turning 62 I went back to the drawing board. Now I am not a slow twitch guy more of a middle distance type

Started LSD 10 months ago. After 5 months I ran a sub 20 road off easy running about 50 minutes a day. A month before the race I did 3 hard workouts. I ran 2 5ks at race effort plus 10 seconds per mile and 8 x 400 starting at 1:45 down to 1:20 with 400 walks and a mile time trial 5:52. I kept up the miles and added some threshold and a few vo2 workouts and got down to 19:05 on the track a bit disappointed but oh well. Just about to turn 63 so not too bad.