a sub 18 minute 5K....I'll do whatever you tell me

Are you a male or female?

Run as many miles as you can without getting injured.

How old are you?

If you need coaching help post your e-mail.

Lots of tempo stuff.

Guy. soon to be 26. When I was getting ready for the half marathon I did tempos on the track to more easily track the pace and ran consistent 6:50's for up to 6 miles. Come race day that got to 10 before the wheels fell off. Pretty much all of my runs are progression in nature. I start very slow and used to probably overpush for my ability level, adjusted since in order to get miles up.

3/10

'I'll do whatever you tell me '

Don't tempt me

I'm surprised you rated it that high.

Really could just use some advice. I've considered the just running at this 50ish mileage for a few more years and see if something clicks. Not saying that's Solinsky's story, but he cracked 27 def. by not running into an injury.

Height, weight, how's your diet? Do you already do any supplementary training? (stretching lifting cross training)? Have you read and tried pfitzinger 55-70 and or a "hadd" style plan at about 50-60 mpw? What's your max heart rate? Do you own a HRM?

A lot of good info here:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3681813

6 feet, 160-165. No more weight to be lost. Basketball was my sport and I do other sports and my pushups and some core work (on a pullups kick lately). Don't know what my max heart rate is. Have a monitor that came with a garmin 305 gift but don't use it. It's low, I'm pretty certain of that. Not familiar with those specific plans though I have read a lot of the hadd thread back in the day. Not jogging the memory however.

No offence but at 6ft and over 160lbs you probably have some weight to lose. I'm 6ft2 and less than 150lbs, my 5k is 14.50 by the way. Make sure you're eating low fat high carb and eating enough, if you can't handle 60mpw then something is wrong and nutrition is often an overlooked factor. Cut out the junk food if you eat any, plenty of fresh fruit and veg. The training part is easy when your body can handle it

160 is fine for 6 ft and a sub 18 5k. I am 5'8" and have run sub 18 5ks at 146 (put on lbs after injuries). You will be faster if you weigh less, but it is not a prerequisite.

Do hills. Lots and lots of hills. Do sprints on short steep hills (25-100m) and mile to 5k pace on longer hills (400-800m). Also do 18 minutes (9 reps) of 30 sec hard, 30 sec medium every two to three weeks. Make yourself go further each time you do the workout. 50 mpw is plenty.

Tom Selle wrote:

6 feet, 160-165. No more weight to be lost. Basketball was my sport and I do other sports and my pushups and some core work (on a pullups kick lately). Don't know what my max heart rate is. Have a monitor that came with a garmin 305 gift but don't use it. It's low, I'm pretty certain of that. Not familiar with those specific plans though I have read a lot of the hadd thread back in the day. Not jogging the memory however.

If you can't see veins in your abs, you have weight to lose. It will help.

Do not post your emails. You'll get these idiot know-it-alls like me desperately trying to receive entitlement. The only advice I'll give to you that seems to work for most people is to run more mileage.

Randy savage wrote:

No offence but at 6ft and over 160lbs you probably have some weight to lose. I'm 6ft2 and less than 150lbs, my 5k is 14.50 by the way. Make sure you're eating low fat high carb and eating enough, if you can't handle 60mpw then something is wrong and nutrition is often an overlooked factor. Cut out the junk food if you eat any, plenty of fresh fruit and veg. The training part is easy when your body can handle it

And no offense to you, but I'm 6'2" 167 lbs. with a PR of 14:33, so you don't know what you're talking about.

Especially if this guy was a bball player, there is no sense in trying to change his body type to yours at this point in life, he'll just get injured. Since I'm much bigger and faster than you, I would say the weight thing is bunk.

Biggest suggestion: You said that most of your runs were progression runs. Start mixing it up and pay more attention to the purpose of the runs as you're putting your training schedule together. Go and take a peek at McMillian's site for an example. If you're always running the same workout, you're almost certainly not getting enough recovery and/or not doing your main workouts hard enough. For starters, move to more of a base phase mixup. We run about the same mileage; here's this week for me, keeping in mind that I'm ramping up for a marathon. This is pretty much exactly Pfitzinger's schedule:

M: xtraining + lifting

T: 11mi easy

W: 13mi at "long run" pace

H: a.m. swim + lift, p.m. 5mi recovery, 4 striders thrown in

F: 9mi with 4mi @ LT pace

S: 5mi recovery

Su: 16mi at long run pace

Week total: ~59mi

Easy pace: About 70-75% of Max HR

Recovery: I run it at about 67% of Max HR, YMMV. Anything that you can run where after doing that workout, the next day you feel better.

Long run pace: about 73-83% of max HR (the higher part for drift)

LT pace: 82%-88% of max HR

I'm typing those ranges from memory, but to give some concrete numbers, my max HR is about 186. I run my easy runs at about 130 HR, my recovery runs as slowly as I need to (the "run with your girlfriend" trick can be useful here if applicable), my LT runs at 153 heart rate, starting at 135 HR and then finishing the last 4 miles or so harder at 140 or a little higher.

Take that basic pattern, vary it a little week to week (increase a bit, take a rest week when needed, etc.); you'll see big improvements over two months. Mix in the occasional hill sprints or a Hadd "200x200" workout instead of the LT, etc. At 26, you can probably handle two workouts per week plus the long run...

None of that is original - it's basically Hadd's advice (google 'hadd.pdf') and Pfitzinger's base training schedule, and very similar to McMillian's ranges. If you don't know your HR numbers, you can go by pace using the McMillian calculator (google it), but I find HR to be more reliable.

See the "Soup to Nuts" thread for some suggestions on leg exercises to do to complement your upper body and core work - this is injury prevention, not for making you faster.