How to Time Trial to find out what shape you are in

Just run hard for 5k, if that's your distance, and time yourself. If you struggled in the later bits you go out easier in the next one. If you finish knowing you could have run faster then go out a bit harder in the next one. The point of a trial is to learn something you don't already know.

Ok well that settles that! I will go out hard and see what happens. Thanks!

It doesn’t matter too much.

In your first scenario, you are better off starting your training based on the 18:30 than 17:30, so you learned enough from the time trial.

In your second scenario, you could be better off training based on 17:30, but if you look up targets based on 18:00, it won’t matter too much.

You will obviously be able to feel how difficult all of your workouts are too and make them faster or slower as you progress over time.

You probably have some sort of feel for what kind of effort you can maintain for 15-20 minutes already. You're sort of checking to see if you really can and what sort of numbers it produces.

You are overthinking it.

1) I would be hard pressed to believe you have no idea what kind of shape you are in. Sure there might be a 30 second variance .

2) Even if you overcook the 1st mile of a 5k or something and crawl it in you still extract information from the all out effort and can calibrate your training paces appropriately. e.g. you run 5:00 for the first mile but end up averaging 5:20 pace for the 5k it is probably not that crazy to assume 5:10-5:15 in a well paced effort.

phxrunner17 wrote:

...you should time trial and find out what kind of shape ...my question is how would you go about doing this

The 12 minute Cooper Aerobic Fitness Test

Jack Daniels Calculator wrote:

phxrunner17 wrote:

...you should time trial and find out what kind of shape ...my question is how would you go about doing this

The 12 minute Cooper Aerobic Fitness Test

With the results of this test, using the Jack Daniels Calculator, you can get a very very good approximation as to what your race times will be over distances 2mile through the 5k.

The Jack Daniels Calculator will then also provide your race potential over the 10K and Half-Marathon distances, provided you put in the requisite volume of aerobic training.

The Cooper Test has several advantages over a 5k Time Trial:

(1) Consistency. Unlike a 5k Time Trial, the duration of the test is not going to change, from one TT to the next, with changes in one's fitness.

(2) If motivated enough to run the test properly (i.e., HARD), the athlete will ventilate at VO2max (i.e., process oxygen to the maximum of their current potential) in the test, and their pace will be their Velocity at VO2max. These are both good things to assess, and do not occur in a 5k Time Trial.

(3). The maximal treadmill exercise test was/is considered the Gold Standard measure of aerobic fitness, but short of having an expensive lab (with trained technicians) to conduct the test, a lot of US tax dollars went into the research and verification of the Cooper Test as the next best thing.

You can think of another benefit to this test being that at your probable fitness level, you will be running less than half the time you would in a 5k TT, but you'll have a better chance of actually getting a valid aerobic assessment.

For the purposes of gaging your effort, at your probable fitness level, you'll likely cover somewhere between 7 and 8 laps around the track.

Make sure you are properly warmed up, and should you choose, report back on how it goes. Cheers!

"By performing some mathematical calculations, he determined that the time it takes to run 1.5 miles (6 laps and 15 meters on a standard 400 meter track) has a near-perfect correlation with 12-Minute Run test performance. So when testing large groups, most administrators will use the Cooper 1.5 Mile Run test in lieu of the Cooper 12-Minute Run test because the logistics are easier. You should think of the 12-Minute Run test and the 1.5 Mile Run test as interchangeable because they will both give you essentially the same result in terms of your estimated VO2 max."

https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2018/06/08/50-years-of-the-cooper-12-minute-run

Maybe not applicable for you (5K racing), but a few years back I had a 1-mile track race on my calendar. I hadn't raced that distance in decades (only 5K to marathon), and was unsure of pacing.

I was advised to solo time-trial 1200m, and that would be my 1-mile pace in a race situation. Result: 4:14

That accurately predicted the race result. Well-paced all-out effort was 5:38. (That was age 59, so reasonably respectable, ha!)

Daniels' calculator is also very accurate for me, plugging in times from various points in my running "career." They do predict somewhat faster marathons than I achieved at any given time, but that's likely a reflection of my relatively low training volume.

Jack Daniels Calculator wrote:

(2) If motivated enough to run the Cooper test properly (i.e., HARD), the athlete will ventilate at VO2max (i.e., process oxygen to the maximum of their current potential) in the test, and their pace will be their Velocity at VO2max.

Actually, on the 20-pnt Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion, when performing this test properly, there will come a point into the test, around 9-11 minutes, where the RPE is 18-20, i.e., VERY HARD. But just hang on, because the test will quickly end. After your first attempt, the next time you repeat the test, maybe a week later, you'll likely cover at least 100meters further in distance, just from the practice, and better gaging pacing, from the first attempt. Just don't start out with all-out sprinting, and you'll be fine.

Now here is some side-track musing...

Cooper probably performed seminal work (test protocols, etc.) which was the foundation that later physiologists, such as Jack Daniels, built upon. Daniels later got shoe company money (Athletics West) to fund some of his lab research.

Did Cooper ever perform any research into what training would make a runner faster, i.e., would lead them to completing the 12-min Cooper Test considerably faster than their first attempts? For example, what if the US Olympic Committee had approached the smart Doctor Cooper and asked him to find out what is the best training in order to get faster? Or maybe the military came back and asked the same question, in order to train their elite special forces commando's?

Maybe Cooper could have approached the problem by having subjects perform the Cooper Test once every two weeks, adjust the training/recovery between those time trials, and find out what does and does not work to keep the needle moving in the right direction. Maybe within a year or two (or three), with enough subjects at hand (military personnel) he could have come up with some pretty good ideas, eh?

I did this 12 minute cooper test.

and finished in exactly 8 laps 3200m.

how fast should I am in a real 5k race, if I achived in the solo 'cooper-12-minute test' 3.200m???

Congratulations! Pull up the Jack Daniels Calculator (at the runsmartproject.com link I provided earlier in this thread), and in the top box where it says, "Select Event Distance", type in 3200, and select "m" (for meters) in the pull-down box to the right. For the "Time" entry, type 12 into the "mm" box, and 00 into the "sec" box. Then click the "Calculate" button, and voila, and it will tell you your equivalent race distance times below underneath the calculator, if you select the "Equivalent" tab. It's that simple! Your VDOT number is listed in the upper right hand corner of the Calculator!

Now you try, and see if you get these values for a 3200m, 12min00sec time:

VDOT...51.8

5k....19:20

Consider that Equivalent time for a 5k would need to be performed under similar conditions that the 12min Cooper test was conducted; if you performed the Cooper test on a track with good weather, then you could expect to perform a 19:20 on a track with good weather. If your 5k race will be on the roads, then your time might be 20-30 seconds slower than the prediction for the track.

What country are you from? What is your native language?

This is an interesting coincidence, because I also just performed a 12min Cooper Test (12'CT) on the track last night! I completed 1.94 miles; here are the results compared to the last time I performed the test 11 weeks ago:

12'CT Date...Dist Covrd......VDOT.....Equiv 5k

May 10...........1.94 miles.......50.3........19:50

Feb 23............1.82 miles.......46.5........21:13

but these are training conditions. I could run 39.14 min for 10k and 18.42 for 5k in a race

3200m solo on track in 12 min = 5000 solo on track in 19.20

the race time would be more interesting.

Are you saying a recent race effort was 18:42? McMillan says one can race a 5k in the total repetition time of a 5x1000m workout (even though rests are taken between the reps)...maybe because of additional adrenaline in an actual race.?

But personally, I don't know, because that effort for me was VERY HARD. It is supposed to be very hard, but I seem to think I'm really struggling compared to what I see on younger faces at races. And my heart rate continued to be elevated during the cool down more than usual. (I'm 60). How was the effort for you, and your age?

I think I could back off and just run more slower aerobic volume instead of workouts, but I would likely not progress in fitness as rapidly. However, I might start to be running on a fine line, because the HR thing is a little concerning,

BTW, did you take HR data in your Cooper Test? I actually hit my HR max (169bpm) at the end of the 12min TT. But I think one is supposed to hit or come pretty close to it when running at velocity at VO2max, at sufficient distance.

Also, I did go out a little fast. The average pace for the 12mins was 6:11, but my first 400m was at 5:44. (I wondered whether I could put it out of the park, before I quickly concluded thereafter that I needed to reign it in.) So maybe that made it more of a suffer-fest than it should have been?