At what point does going out faster hurt you?

I think it depends on your training...like the size of your base or your raw speed, and other factors i cant think of. I typically go out at a 5:15 with a PR at 16:15 5k...but if I hit the mile at 4:52 b/c I want to go with the leaders...I die and I die badly...17:30. I dont think going out 5-10 seconds faster is going to be THAT much a difference, you might feel it a little, or it might take you to a PR. I think that only going out about 15-25 seconds faster will ultimately bring you down.

Hopefully I answered your question

Take a step back and look at the simple correlation. A "not so well" was produced after 5:10-5:15 first miles the last TWO races. The 16:28 was after a 5:23. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that going out faster isn't helping. You don't need to over think this.

What makes you feel that you can run 16:15?

In my opinion, faster times come regardless if you have them in mind or not. Stay process oriented. Concentrate on doing the things that will get you there instead of what 'there' will look like. If not, your dreams won't connect to reality.

You're racing. It's safe to say you're doing your best and redlining what your body can do with respect to your training and talent at that point in time. 5 secs is huge. You'd PR big time, if you kept up that pace. 15:55 3mi vs your 16:28. That half a min improvement.

For starters, know my bias that even pacing is unquestionably the best way to race. With that said, I find it unwise to try and hit a first mile split for a goal that you think you can run. Instead, monitor yourself by how you feel during the race. In my running, every race that I run before the state meet is meant to teach me how to run the fastest I possibly can on that day. So, in the beginning of the season I try to run with the same strategy that I would run with at the end of the season. The only reason why the times change is due to my progression in training. Try and get a feel for your running and be aware of how fast you are going.

I wouldn't say that "staying in position" is a myth, but I believe that some runners need to overcome this and run based on feel instead. When I ran a 15:46 pr last weekend, I went through the mile in 5:05 and was in about 75th place. I managed to cross two miles in 10:09 and by then I was in ~30th. The last mile I ran was in 5:07 and I got up to 7th place. What you can take from this is that generally when you run even pacing, especially in a high school race, you will be constantly moving up throughout the race. This is because I would say, 80% of high school runners go out too fast in hopes of being carried into a pr.

Thanks guys for the advice.

Next race I'm going to try to slow it down a bit and stay comfortable the first mile. I'm not going to worry about hitting a certain time.

I think the reason I felt I needed to go out faster was because I thought that that would be the easiest way to cut time off, rather than pushing harder the second or third mile. That's not true obviously =P

There was a link earlier in the year mostly of a woman's team that showed some statistics where the group who went out slightly faster than their average pace did the best. It was too small of a sampling size to really trust, plus you can only really consider the stats in regards to athletes that trained like that one girls team. Wish I could find the link. I don't remember, but it was basically saying that if you can average a 6:00 pace for an 18:36 5k that starting in 5:50 tended to lead to a better race time than starting at 6:00. Like I say, though, it was just looking at the times of maybe one girls team over the course of their season.