"don't let perfect be the enemy of good"

Quality workouts should take priority over so-called "base phase." You should do them immediately. I look at "base phase" as something you do AFTER a successful season of quality workouts and races.

not sure how to answer this wrote:

Quality workouts should take priority over so-called "base phase." You should do them immediately. I look at "base phase" as something you do AFTER a successful season of quality workouts and races.

I was always under the impression that you had to build up to a certain mileage level before starting workouts. When I started out running I was a mid-d runner, and my program wasn't as distance based as others, so I'm kind of self-taught when it comes to distance training (I'd like to improve my 5k, since those are the most available, shorter distance competitions). That might be where my confusion has been with training, thanks for the advice.

No! If you've been running for years of course you can do some sessions.

Stop 'building' and stick at a set level of mpw, then introduce your workouts.

I suppose you should start with something like long reps, not suddenly start doing 100m sprints.

not sure how to answer this wrote:

Quality workouts should take priority over so-called "base phase." You should do them immediately. I look at "base phase" as something you do AFTER a successful season of quality workouts and races.

Base phase comes after your post season break, which comes after your racing season which comes after your pre season phases which come after your base phase.

Plant fan wrote:

No! If you've been running for years of course you can do some sessions.

Stop 'building' and stick at a set level of mpw, then introduce your workouts.

I suppose you should start with something like long reps, not suddenly start doing 100m sprints.

Thanks for the help.

Maybe you could try fartlek - just run as you feel. Do your steady normal runs but throw in a few faster bits.

I feel like I know the answer to this, but I'm going to post anyway. I don't know if any of you can relate, but sometimes I feel like I can get caught in the details of a training plan. What I mean is that it seems like if I can't do the ideal or perfect training plan, I'll opt to just not do the sessions, for fear of doing something "wrong" (hence the name of this thread). My normal day-to-day schedule is pretty busy so the stuff I get caught up in is that I won't do sessions because I won't be able to consistently do them at a certain time of the week. Its weird because I lift a little bit, and when I lift I can just do whatever whenever and I can feel good about it and move on, but with running I feel like I have to do things a certain way. Maybe I'm just gunshy about running hard because of previous injuries so I feel like being really regimented will protect me from getting hurt.

Plant fan wrote:

Maybe you could try fartlek - just run as you feel. Do your steady normal runs but throw in a few faster bits.

Yeah I was thinking something similar. Over my winter break I was thinking about having one day be an uptempo/fartlek day, and the other day be a longer run, with maybe some faster stuff incorporated in. Then most likely strides the day before the planned workouts. I feel like this would probably be a good place to start out.

Well, if your not old you sound old. :) Injuries and no set schedule is pretty much the norm when you get late 50s into 60, and you do what you can.

Stick to a mileage you do well at, do fartlek once a week, and a longer 1:30-2hr run a week- off season. When you feel like it, put 5-6 miles of Tempo (MPish> 1/2 pace) in your LR. Then transition to doing intervals instead of Fartlek- in season. If you still want more, add another fast session on another day of the week.

So a longer endurance interval session and a shorter one or hill repeats for the week in season. See how you do with that.

889 wrote:

Well, if your not old you sound old. :) Injuries and no set schedule is pretty much the norm when you get late 50s into 60, and you do what you can.

Stick to a mileage you do well at, do fartlek once a week, and a longer 1:30-2hr run a week- off season. When you feel like it, put 5-6 miles of Tempo (MPish> 1/2 pace) in your LR. Then transition to doing intervals instead of Fartlek- in season. If you still want more, add another fast session on another day of the week.

So a longer endurance interval session and a shorter one or hill repeats for the week in season. See how you do with that.

I'll take sounding old as a compliment ? I'm 22, reason for being short on time is that I'm in my senior year of an engineering program. I could learn a lot from those older runners.

I'll try out those workouts. Thanks for the help!!

The ideal schedule is the one which works for you.

You need to listen to your body and know when you have to scale back or take a rest day in order to stay injury free.

I guess I was lucky that worked for me. Obviously that is not the way to be world class but that's okay.

889 wrote:Well, if your not old you sound old. :) Injuries and no set schedule is pretty much the norm when you get late 50s into 60, and you do what you can.

At 61, yup, that's me now. But a few years back, at 57-58, I had a schedule that might work for the OP.

Every nine days I included a long run, a medium-long run, a lactate-threshold workout, and a VO2-max workout. The other five days were easy runs or days off.

Just having that basic schedule made a huge difference. It's loose enough to not be stifling, but rigid enough to maintain consistency. Prior to implementing this, I had been floundering for more than a decade. With the schedule, I improved tremendously in races from 5K to Marathon.

OP wants to focus on the 5K, so he could tweak it as he wishes -- shorter long runs, maybe add some faster stuff. But, for me, this worked well for 5K, and even a one-mile track race.

Typical schedule:

VO2max (800 or 1-mile repeats at 5K pace)

Easy

Medium long run (12-17 miles at easy to MP)

Off or Easy

LT (2-mile repeats or 4-miles at 15K pace)

Easy

Long run (18-20 miles easy)

Off

Easy

Within just a few months, my 5K improved from 20+ to sub-19, and sub-1-hour 15K. Within a year, marathon improved from 3:26 to 3:07. Mile time was 5:38 -- slower than me as a 14-year-old but not bad at 58 with no workouts faster than 5K pace.

longtimerunner56 wrote:

The ideal schedule is the one which works for you.

You need to listen to your body and know when you have to scale back or take a rest day in order to stay injury free.

I guess I was lucky that worked for me. Obviously that is not the way to be world class but that's okay.

56 is right. Even among world class runners one size does not fit all.

22! LOL! I started running @22. :) You got plenty of time to reach all your goals. Bad patches and set backs are pretty well the norm in life.

Nice schedule Allen, and great times! ?... Yeah, 60 here and got a 20:09, 5K on the 4th of July. Puts me close to age grade times back in the day. But it's been rotating injuries since then. Oh well, still getting the easy miles in, and that's ok with me at this stage of life- and with all the race shut downs.

889 wrote:Yeah, 60 here and got a 20:09, 5K on the 4th of July. Puts me close to age grade times back in the day. But it's been rotating injuries since then.

Wow, that is excellent! My most recent was 22 minutes, ugh. Only three runs a week for me now.

My age 58 times were all age-grade PRs. My lifetime actual bests were at age 23 (16:04, 2:40:30). With that in mind, I'll point out to the OP that it could well be NOW or NEVER.

At age 22-23, I didn't know it at the time, but I had only a brief 18-month window in which to train seriously. That was between college and a career that demanded 60-80 hours a week, plus home ownership, marriage, kids. The rest of my 20s and my entire 30s were years of high-stress, exhaustion, repeated attempts at "comebacks" that crashed after only a few weeks.

I like your plan. I have seen people talk about forgoing the normal 7 day training cycle. I always thought that it would be difficult to change to a longer cycle because it doesn't line up with the normal seven days in a week. Your reasoning for changing actually makes it seem like the switch would be easier than sticking to seven days. I'll try it out and see the results. Thank you!

889 wrote:

longtimerunner56 wrote:

The ideal schedule is the one which works for you.

You need to listen to your body and know when you have to scale back or take a rest day in order to stay injury free.

I guess I was lucky that worked for me. Obviously that is not the way to be world class but that's okay.

56 is right. Even among world class runners one size does not fit all.

22! LOL! I started running @22. :) You got plenty of time to reach all your goals. Bad patches and set backs are pretty well the norm in life.

Thanks to everyone that offed advice to me in this thread. I am very appreciative of all the advice.

I'll try to implement some of the things said in this thread and report back later on the results if anyone may be interested.

twon wrote:

I'll try to implement some of the things said in this thread and report back later on the results if anyone may be interested.

That would be great! Good luck and go get um! ?