19:38 5K to 16:30 5K: One year only

Some are more gifted than others.

I 33 call master seems to be a person of less ability (no offense, based on your times/training from past)

Yeah go for it. You can definetly do it. From summer before my junior year to senior year i went from 1910 to 1635. You dont need anything special to go 1630 just consistent training. Stay healthy and work hard give it time and it will come.

The original poster didn't say whether they were in high school, but improvement in high school athletes is somewhat related to their bodies naturally getting stronger as they grow and mature.

After age 20 or thereabouts, it's all about the miles and what you do with them.

For me, when I was 25, increasing maximum weekly mileage to 100 (from 75), and average mileage to about 80 (from 65) over a year took me from 17:xx to 16:low over 5000m. Most of those extra miles were steady runs over hills and trails. The volume and intensity of tempos and intervals went up gradually, as the higher aerobic volume could support more quality. But there were a lot of miles at 7:30 or slower on the trails.

Nothing stellar in those times or training, just to support the other advice given that putting in a big aerobic base will take you most of the way to 16:30 if you're capable of that.

But a good 5000m is also built on a good 3000m/2 mile time, so once your aerobic base is solid, you need to start getting reasonably comfortable at running 76 second laps (=9.30 3000m, about what you should be running for that to run 16:30 for 5k) and even more comfortable with 79 second laps (=3.18 1000m, = 3.58 1200m, = 4.57 1500m) for 16:30 pace. 4-5 x 800 at 3000m pace with even time (or slightly less) recovery is a tough workout, but a good one for 5000m runners. If you're working at 5000m pace, 6000-8000m worth of 1000-1500m intervals with even time recovery is a good one.

You might not be able to run those lap times immediately, so perhaps you will start off being able to hold 81 seconds/lap on your 5km pace repeats. After a month you can bring it down to 80 and see how that feels. Try and run them evenly. If you have a stopwatch with a countdown timer, set it for 20 seconds and try to hit every 100m in that time. The pace feels really easy the first 200m of the workout, but you want to get used to running evenly at goal pace.

Good luck and have fun!

That doesn't sound like a bad idea. I think I will go ahead and give that a shot. I work full time (I'm 25 by the way), but I could sacrifice a half hour in the morning to run.

So should I just start adding the mileage now? Like all 20-28 miles starting this week OR should I just run like 2-3 times this week= to 8-12 miles, then increase next week?

I-33 Call Master wrote:

So should I just start adding the mileage now? Like all 20-28 miles starting this week OR should I just run like 2-3 times this week= to 8-12 miles, then increase next week?

4 miles easy is easy, but 20-28 miles is a lot.

So ... introduce them gradually. Run them slowly. Try and get onto soft surfaces.

See Pfitzinger's article about this for some specific recommendations.

I'm wondering...would it be pointless to run say 3 miles in the morning 3-4 times a week? 3 miles seems really low so I didn't know if it would help any.

3 miles in the morning would be beneficial. no rules as to how much is too little, but 3or 4 miles would be the bare min. for me

Exactly. No rules about this. Depends how much time you have available to fit this in with the rest of your life.

That is the challenge with doubles, fitting them in with actual real life! But I think you can probably get 10-30% more mileage a week out of doubles than if you were just running singles.

The one thing Pfitz doesn't discuss quite as much in the article linked to is relating doubles to periodization. When you're building a base (even for 5km) you probably want to max out what you can run in single runs each day before you add doubles.

Though again, if it's a scheduling round real life problem, you might add a double before you're maxed out on your single run mileage.

But once you're running workouts Pfitzinger's advice is good. Keep the long run every week to maintain aerobic condition, but otherwise you want to save your legs somewhat for those interval workouts.

Lots of people discuss doing easy runs the morning of their interval workouts. However, I prefer to do an easy 4-5 miler in the afternoon with the workout in the morning. Most road races are in the morning, and it makes sense to do your workout when your races will be. if you're not running races in the morning, then this isn't relevant.

BIG BOX wrote:

For now, run an hour per day, every single day, no matter what. Don't even think about the pace. Don't work out. No joke.

Talk to you in a few months -- you'll probably be halfway to your goal by then.

yep...by winter, you'll be running low 18's and most likely breaking your old PR no problem if you simply run a lot.

BIG BOX wrote:

For now, run an hour per day, every single day, no matter what. Don't even think about the pace. Don't work out. No joke.

Talk to you in a few months -- you'll probably be halfway to your goal by then.

BEST ADVICE. Take it

Whatever you do, do not listen to "BIG BOX". You would not only be broken for a long time, but you would never want to run again. You are right, 19:38 is terrible. That tells me that you are inexperienced or (lets face it) not that talented. You need patience and more than a year of a planned system with short term goals. If you don't run 16:30, are you a failure in your mind?

Agreed.

Ask us again once an hour every day starts to seem easy. Then we'll talk about long runs, tempo runs, etc.

I meant to agree with BIG BOX.

An hour every day is reasonable. Take your time getting there.

Sounds like puberty to me.

Yeah, all of this planning and analyzing is just my nature. I agree with the simplistic view of just go running for 1 hour everyday until that feels comfortable, but I worry (am i going to slow? too fast? not getting workouts in?, etc) I need something more precise. Plus I don't see the harm in varying the speeds a little here and there.

All the planning is good, and fun for some personality types. But it's really important not to be too inflexible when you, say, write out your mileage for the next 25 weeks. Minor aches and pains, or excess fatigue can come along, and you should be ready to adapt and cut back if necessary.

80 miles a week is a lot. Some people can ramp up to that with no problem, others struggles over many years to build up to that without getting injured. You'll get a sense of how your body reacts as you go -- you just have to be listening to it. If you really struggle with 70 miles, don't be afraid to settle in at 65 miles for a few months. That's still much higher than you've run before, and may give you some surprising results.

Thank you.

This isn't rocket science. Run as much as you can handle comfortably. Run 6 or 7 days a week. 2 times a week go faster than your easy pace.

You will be faster.

Your scientific approach and exact miles, etc is stupid, and you will most likely quit running when you don't hit those miles. Run off of feel. When you get good, then be obsessive.

If you follow darkness's advice and my advice you will get better trust us. If you have only been running 20-30 miles for the last 2-3 years, bumping (comfortably) to 50-70 will more than suffice. You will run in the 16s. Just run baby. Stop thinking!

What part of it did you have a problem with?

When in high school I went 19:09 for 5k in XC as a freshman, off of very little summer training, but I had run in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. I also generally just ran five days a week, whatever the coach gave us.

After XC was over, realizing I had just 2.9 years until State Meet as a senior I stepped up to the plate and ran EVERY DAY for three years. I started with 40-50 mpw that winter freshman year, and got up to 10:20-10:30 in the 3200 that Spring. Then that summer I did a solid 10 weeks at 60 mpw. Nothing faster than 5:30 pace on some fartleks and 5:45 pace on hard runs.

That Fall I went 16:50's in fast XC races and one 16:40 at State Meet.

This guy can do it. Other people can too. It doesn't take heroic efforts of 25 week base training, or sprinting or tapering. The guys who run 13:00-flat or 14:00-flat or 15:00-flat don't train like that either.

Last week:

48 miles: 7 runs

5 weeks= 204 total miles = avg of 40.8 miles in 5 weeks

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I have picked up Daniels' Running Formula. I think that is the plan I'm going to go with. I'll probably hang around the Phase I for a while, b/c the base is very very important. So I'll be combinining Lydiard and Daniels. Next weekend I'm running a 5k to see what VDOT value I'll be at. My guess is somewhere close to 19:00-19:15.