What's the purpose of this workout?

Does your coach not tell you why you're doing a workout if you ask him or her or do you just not ask?

His standard reply is, "It's tradition." That was his response when I asked about the 5K.

Makes no sense to me. I would try to run in control & not kick at the end.

Fair enough I suppose. Personally, I kind of like the idea but you really deserve a better answer.

running a shorter distance time trial keeps you sharp. If you haven't been over raced through the year, and you're healthy, this is as good for race sharpening as anything. Don't overthink it.

I’d think a 3k type time trial would be more adequate though. You’ll still get the vo2max tuneup without the fatigue of the extra 2k.

Id feel like a 5k a week out from a national race seems like an awful idea as far as mental/physical freshness goes, but who knows, I haven’t sent a college team to natties.

So just an update. We ran the 5K with many of our guys racing PRs. Then a few days later he had us run a 3000 at 8K, 2000s at 5K, and several 1000s at mile pace with very little rest between reps. A few days later at nationals we all ran about a minute slower than at conference. Might say it was the course, but several guys we beat handily at conference were 30-40 seconds ahead of us. We felt sharp at the start but quickly fatigued. Very frustrating. What do other teams do the last week or two before the championship meet? I don't want the same thing to happen at the end of track.

Ok so you raced a 5k close to a goal 8k and then followed that up with an aggressive mid-season workout. It should be impossible to run "several" 1ks at mile pace on little rest. So at the end of that you're all just hammering k's to exhaustion. It makes no sense.

You should be peaking for conference/nationals. The two weeks in between is about riding that fitness out. Proper recovery after the first race. 1 more workout to stay sharp but making sure not to overdo it. 1 race week workout. I would do even a day off after the conference meet then easy mileage for a few days. Thursday or Friday do a last real workout. Maybe something like 8-10 x 1k @ 8k/10k. That's a workout you've done earlier in the year but easier to recover from than 1600-3200 reps that you've built to. Race week Tuesday or Wednesday something like 4 x 1200 @ T (read: slower than 8k race pace by a good bit) + 4-6 x 200 @ mile/3k. Some like shorter/faster reps race week: 2x1k, 2x400, 2x200, all getting faster. That's fine too.

You just had too much quality crammed in. 3 races in 3 weeks plus a workout to exhaustion after race #2 plus however many other races you had over the course of the season. It's too much.

Thanks for sharing this! It helps a lot! I'm always learning and trying to improve. Hope to coach someday.

Yet another “My coach is so bad…” thread.

I like the 3K time trial. If I had to run the 5K, I'd do it at 10Kish effort.