What kind of mileage would get me to sub 19 for the 5k?

I can run 15 minutes on 25 MPW so it isn't mileage that you need.

If all of your runs are 3-5 miles long and you run them all continuously at a moderately hard effort, then 3-4 runs per week will get you there.

So the answer is: 10-15 mpw

Totally doable. Good luck.

If you structured that 10-15 miles such that it was even faster and harder intervals and you added short recovery in between reps, then you could get well below 19:00 on 20-25 mpw.

You need to run faster in order to run faster.

More miles will not help you.

You can get there on 30 to 40 mpw if you have quality workouts every week. More than that may leave you tired going into speed sessions which is detrimental. Also talent plays a big part. Talented people can be very fast on 20 mpw at shorter distances while untalented people can log big miles and still suck.

15 mpw.

Dude, what grade will you be in the fall?

Your mile PR is 6:08, you did that last fall on much less mileage and while you were younger?

You are doing your runs now at a faster pace than before

You can probably just log 40 MPW all summer, do quality workouts with the team once the season starts, race and do it.

No guarantee of course, but there is no magic number of miles to get you there either.

That said, I'm a fan of big mileage for high school athletes who can handle it. That would be upping to 70 MPW in the summer before a senior year of cross country, and in rare cases (for exceptionally gifted and durable athletes) even up to 90 MPW. Not really a fan of getting to 100 MPW until college.

Good luck! I'm not a betting man, but I think you will destroy 19 minutes based on what you've said.

The mileage needed to get you a sub 19 min 5k is 5k!!!

100mpw will probably do it. But a lot less will probably do it too.

I will be a senior. I keep getting stressed because this is my last year and I want to really improve.

What are some examples of quality workouts that you would reccomend?

Do that.

If you can’t hit your workout paces:

1. Re-evaluate your estimated fitness and choose more realistic goals.

2. Run slower for your easy runs

3. Run less for your easy runs

In that order

I'm 38, and I ran 18:52 prior to Covid (on a course that had a half mile of grass and dirt) on 45 mpw with two speed workouts per week.

My typical week had:

8x1000m at tempo pace with one minute standing rest.

5x1000m at 5K pace with 400m jogs. The last 1000m rep I really hammered as hard as I could.

10-12 mile long runs

The rest was easy mileage at 7:45 to 8:10 pace with four, 10 second hard strides after every run.

So, if my non-talented old body can do this, so can a younger person.

I first went sub 19 at 20 mpw. I was stuck around 19:02-19:10 for a while though.. I didn't increase my milage at all bc I was worried about getting injured at the time, my main focus was really just to build some strength in my legs and learn good form as I had IT band issues that put me off for about half a year.. All my runs were steady runs around 7:30 pace with weekly intervals: I'd keep them really short because I was awful at pacing and ran each rep really hard with a short recovery, so I ended up doing sessions like 4 x 3 minutes with 30 seconds easy recovery. Ended up running around 18:30 and then around 18:05 on a track shortly after.

Honestly it all depends on how your body feels, if you’re feeling more gassed/tired at 60 mpw I’d tone it down a bit, and you should definitely focus more on quality over quantity runs, also it’s very important to run easy runs easy so you don’t end up getting hurt

Are you female?