Thanks! I'm 33. What would make the 1000s more suitable over 400s?
the 1000s are more suitable than 400s because, as you said, your problem is maintaining your 5:40-5:50 pace over distance.
At least one other hit on this, but your issue is you need to be able to run at a faster pace for a longer period of time. Your training paces, and even your tempo runs are relatively slow, so it's not a great idea to throw you into SUPER fast 400s just yet. 1000s are your friend for a while until you start running some faster 5ks. Once you get to 17:45, THEN start doing some workouts with 400s.
Racing does not replace training. Fisher rarely races but has managed to be very successful and 800m is no more beneficial than doing speed work. Rodgers seemed to race almost weekly and Kipchoge about twice a year, so “racing themselves fit” is not advantageous.
Nor does training replace racing. But again, this is not an either/or thing.
I was mostly responding to the idea that randomly hopping into an 800m will improve running speed.
Nor does training replace racing. But again, this is not an either/or thing.
I was mostly responding to the idea that randomly hopping into an 800m will improve running speed.
He'd like to hold maybe 5:40s for 5 km. That doesn't require much speed. He needs to be able to maintain that speed for a longer time. I actually at first saw this as more an endurance issue than as a speed one. Notice that the splits he gives slow with each mile. But he does okay at longer stuff so I sort of let go of that idea.
My next thought is that it's more of a pacing issue. I don't know how much time he has until that one last shot at a better 5 km or why it's a last shot. Is he giving up the sport afterwards? But if that last shot is coming soon and he doesn't have a lot of prep time I'd suggest he start a lot the race slower. I'd bet he could go 5:50,5:50, 5:45 and get under 18:00. But another problem here is that the 5:40 is probably much faster than he's used to running even though his speed for that pace is more than adequate which is not surprising as from his post it seems he never gets close to running that pace in training.
So he needs to get to where a 5:40 pace is a lot more manageable and yes, intervals are one way to do that. I'd have him run maybe 8 x 400 in 80-85 taking as much recovery as he needs to maintain that speed. Another way would be to race some miles. If you race frequently you adapt to the pace of those races. If your mile best is 5:00 you'll find 5:40 a lot easier to maintain than if your best is 5:30 and if your best mile is 5:30 and you race the mile regularly that time will come down even if all you do in training is distance runs.
I've done it and I'm not alone. When Joe Henderson switched to NOTHING but easy distance runs he raced as well or better than when he trained conventionally. He said that when he looked back at his old logs he found that he ran best when races accounted for about 10% of his total mileage. Get much above 10% and he started getting hurt. Get below it and he wasn't as fast.
Bob Deines, who was one of the big stars in Joe's LSD book raced constantly but did only slow runs. He believed all the races served as "speedwork." But he also noted that when he hadn't raced for a while he needed a race to sharpen up. His best mile was 4:16 and said if he raced a mile after a racing layoff the first one back would be something like 4:27 but the next would be around 4:17 and he found that 10 second per mile improvement pretty standard. Ed Whitlock did no fast training but like Deines, he raced very often. And he wasn't just a marathoner. He was near the top of his age group all the way down to the 1500.
Lydiard told me that you could race well by doing only distance runs and "racing yourself fit." He did not think that would work as well as following his training would, but he thought it could work well. I think that for those of us who do poorly with intervals this is a good alternative with the added advantage of getting you mentally better prepared for racing. It's not what Fisher or Kipchoge do but what they do is not the only way to race better.