Going from easy runs to all runs at 6:30

Give it ten weeks and report back. I'm predicting diminishing performance.

I did something similar for a year or so in college. We didn't cut out intervals, but did 3 of our 4 easy runs each week at about 6:30 pace. It was hard at first but we got used to running the faster pace. I feel like it made me fitter but wasn't sustainable. It took me a couple years afterward for my easy runs to slow back down to 7:30/mile.

I say you try it like the guy above, but I believe you’ll improve quite a bit. Fast running is always better for adaptations than slow running, but nobody goes fast everyday because of the issue of recovery. If you take care of sleep and nutrition and all that, I think you’ll improve quite fast.

it could be beneficial in the immediate short term but over weeks you will tire out; that feeling where your legs feel heavy and your whole body feels weak.

a person used to more mileage could drop down to 30 miles a week and probably be okay running everything faster.

You will be able to do it for a few weeks, seeing your race time dropping during that, until you cannot do it anymore.

By race time dropping I mean race performance dropping.

I'd expect a highschooler to come up with a strategy like that. "I'll tempo everything and tough it out". No you won't. Train like a person with a brain instead.

I did that at 15:00 - going from 7:30 to 6:30. It left me incredibly tired but I got fit very quickly, but had to sleep 9 hours. What I ended up reverting to is harder long runs (e.g. 6:10 every other week) and running 6:50 easy.

so, we began too far one end, so we go too far the other end?

why not mix? i mean the mixes coaches use aren't just for variety of routine, it's one day is endurance, another day is recovery, another day is speed work. you use different systems different days, or one day is used to recover from the last one.

You'll prob run a few prs in the first couple months, but feel dead legged all the time. Eventually you will get injured. If you're lucky it will be a stress fracture that heals relatively quickly and if you are unlucky it will be tendonitis that prevents you from doing more than jogging for 6 months.

Well, it would be an easy strategy for me to adopt. When I was doing 45-50 mpw my half pace was 6:10 and my marathon pace was 6:50. But my 5K was always terrible.

I have no idea if it would work though which is why I was looking for input.

The reason I say this is because I did something similar senior year of hs, except I had faster prs and did the runs faster. I ran every run (except a w/u and c/d here or there) within 30 secs of 5k pr pace (my mileage dropped to like 35 a week for the last month). The results were a 13 second 5k pr and a non union stress fracture that took 6 months to heal.

6:30 pace is around a tempo run pace for your times. if it were me i would only do a 30 min tempo run once or twice a week.

I did this a few years ago in my first year of running. I ran normally and improved to 16:00 5k within 12 months, but then it got harder. So I got frustrated and was seeing people much faster than me run their easy runs at 6:30's, so teenage me thought obviously that if I can do all my runs at 6:30's too then I will be just as fast.

I was running around 45 miles at the time, so a bit more than you, but in the same ballpark. The first few weeks I didn't really notice a change. But after about a month my sessions started being impacted, was hitting slower paces every time, constantly fatigued too and sleeping a lot. Was also dreading sessions/running, total mental burnout where I just didn't want to push myself at all, everything felt really hard and I had no desire to run. Became more of a chore than enjoyable. Had a cold and took me 2 weeks to get over it where I just felt terrible too.
Ended up running a 5k during this time and ran 17:10, which was obviously garbage. I was well and truly in the burnout trap but was too young and inexperienced to really know what that meant. Ended up getting pretty ill with pneumonia which I think was due to having such a weak immune system from overtraining, so had to take 3 months off entirely.

During my time off I did a lot of studying of running and just realised how terrible my running was. Went back to 8:00 - 7:30s and started getting better again.

6:30 pace was my "easy" running pace/recovery pace back in the day. Today I would have to train like a madman to even come close to 6:30 pace.

Do it and let us know how it goes!

6:30 isn't tempo pace for a 17:50 5k.

In the first two weeks you'll think, "wow this is great I feel so fit"! Then you will crash and burn, probably end up injured.

I did something like this when I first started training. I was doing decent mileage (70-80+), training for marathons, a couple years into running & was always trying to run 6:30-6:45 pace on "easy" runs. I went through a stretch where I basically ran a few marathons in that range & slightly faster. I was young & was able to recover well enough to do it but all it got me was good at running that pace. Every long run was at 6:30 but 6:00 pace would give me trouble. It's because I couldn't run much faster in workouts. I wasn't letting the body recovering. Got down into the 2:30s by taking my easy days easy (7-730 or above) & putting the effort in on my workout days.

If you're naturally talented or already have fast PBs then 6:30 pace could be easy. It's not going to be easy for you & it's not going to get you drastically faster. You might naturally run sub-17 in the near future and it might be a combo of more miles/some faster running but you have a path to getting a ton better if you're already around 18-flat on 30mpw. There's no short cuts. Run 40-50mpw w./ 2 workouts & a long run. Build to 60-70. You could end up running 15:xx or faster if you keep going.