HS XC people: What was your slowest 5K time?

My first time for the 3 mile was over thirty minutes...don't beat yourself up over it. If you have a coach that is willing to work with you (as long as you work hard) then work hard. You will even inspire the faster guys/girls and they will respect you for your effort. But I dropped several minutes over a couple seasons because I sucked it up and tried. You can do the same. Good luck.

I've got a (true, but long) story for you that I think will make you feel better about yourself and hopeful give you a bit of hope going forward with the sport. It was freshmen year and my family had just moved from a fairly large sized city in Canada to a small town in northwest PA because of my fathers work. I decided to join the only sport I could at the last minute (XC) as a way to make friends. Outside of winning the highly competitive "twolapsaroundthesoccerfield run" at "field day" in the 7th grade (my school in Canada did not have track or XC)I had no prior experience with running or organized athletics in general. As such, I had no idea how to dress for a run and I showed up to practice the day before the meet wearing cargo pants, skate boarding shoes, and a "L" sized Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt (I was probably about 5'8" and 115lbs at the time so obviously I looked ridiculous). It was 86 degrees out and anything more than a pair of short shorts was far too much on a day like that yet I was shocked too see that the vast majority of the team was "dressed" in such a manner when I arrived at the pre-run meeting area outside of the gym. The coach (who I had met prior during registration for classes) introduced me to the team and told them to "take it easy on him". I took this to be a challenge and I decided I would "beat" these short short-wearing pansy boys on the easy day before the race to establish my dominance (or something like that). Over the course of the 20 minutes of easy running our coach had prescribed to us, I made sure that I stayed at least one shoulder length ahead of anyone in the pack and would surge ahead at times to "show off my speed". Now, in addition to making a fool of myself during all of this I had thoroughly worn myself out by the end of the run. This did not stop me from announcing to our coach and the rest of the team that I actually felt really good and that I thought I had a good chance of winning the race the next day. Race day arrives and when we get to the course coach instructs us to walk/jog the course as a warmup and to get a feel for where we are going. I scoff at this idea as a waste of energy and instead decided to hide in the bathrooms until 10 minutes before the race starts (so I would have time to stretch my soon to be winning muscles). I execute my plan flawlessly and showed up to the start line in time to check in with the rest of the team (who gave me the "where the F were you look"). Now I should remember to mention that since this was a small tuesday meet and first one of the season at that, the coaches decided that they would run both boys and girls together. I didnt know this going into the race so i was pretty stocked that I would get a chance to show off my "talent" in front of the girls. So with this happy thought in my head the gun went off and boy oh boy so did I. Since it was such a small meet and we had a long strait away ahead of us, no one was in a particular hurry to get out hard and so I found myself with a LARGE early lead for the first ~400m or so. Great success! I was going to win this thing easily (so I thought)! It wasnt too soon after those first moments of glee that I realized that I had NO sense of pace, NO idea where I was going and NO idea how long a 5k was. I started to get tired. Really tired. On top of that the next turn was coming up and I didn't know it. Luckily I had turned my head to check on my quickly narrowing lead and saw that the rest of the pack was veering to the right while I was going straight. I turned around to correct my error but it was too late. They had caught me and that was that. My luck had run out and so had the "gas in the tank". The next 3ish miles were the most grueling three miles of my life. My morale was broken once the pack had caught me and the fact it was another scorcher of a day (well over 80) didnt help matters any. I was getting past first by lead pack of boys, then the masses of the middle pack until eventually GIRLS started to pass me as well. I was in dead last (guys and girls) by the time the final 300m of the race came which was to be run on the track. I saw that there were two rather large girls ahead of me so I bided my time until the final turn and unleashed a hellish kick and a loud "Agggggggg!" as I passed them crossed the line before them both (my only victory that day) and promptly collapsed to the ground. My time? 33:06. Now I could have easily quit (and I very seriously considered doing so) if it wasnt for the the support of my coach and of the rest of the team (despite the fact I had acted like a fool they took pity on me) and that would have been that. Instead I stuck with it. Fast forward about 4 yeast later for my senior year of HS cross (by that time we moved again to another state but for the last time) and I was crossing the line at the state cross country championships in the top 20 of the largest divsion which was good enough for "All-State". My time? 16:02.

Moral of the story is dont give up and dont worry about being slow for now. Just have fun and enjoy the sport for now and eventually with some hard work (which I fast forwarded through) you will improve! Even if you dont have quite as dramatic as a drop as I did you can still take pride in knowing that you tried your best and you had fun doing it.

My first XC 5k.. freshman year.. a scrimmage meet in the preseason i ran a 19:40. PR'd with a 17:04 by the end of the year.

Thanks for the story :) Cutting your time in HALF is really impressive. I'll see if I can get my time down to ~30:00 by the start of xc, and just have fun this season & see how much I can improve. Maybe I can look forward to being competitive next season :)

Good to hear, now can you stop creating threads on this? I think I've seen about four or five. If you spent half the time running that you did on this board you could be much faster by now (that last sentence applies to me as well)

I think you must be seeing other people's threads. I've only made one other thread on this site, ever.

Legitimately interesting story, but have you ever heard of paragraphs?

Its okay my slowest 5k is 18:58 and my slowest 3 mile is a humiliating 18:20 my average is a 17:10 so you know how humiliating my times are.

futurexcrunner wrote:

Thanks for the story :) Cutting your time in HALF is really impressive. I'll see if I can get my time down to ~30:00 by the start of xc, and just have fun this season & see how much I can improve. Maybe I can look forward to being competitive next season :)

You have a long time until the xc season, and if you run between now and then you'll make a lot of improvement (assuming you've never seriously trained before). Despite what some other people on these boards will tell you, no one is born running 18 minute 5ks.

Personal Worst is 26:27, I fell in the woods, into a ditch and basically died. (2nd race ever, on a pretty hard course)

I ran a 24:31 the first race of my freshman year coming off of an injury. I walked for like 2 minutes because I had a side cramp. I'm in my junior year now with a pr of 16:44

Hey OP, if you're still on LetsRun today and are seeing this, did you stick with xc and if so how much did you improve? Assuming that you were a freshman when you posted this, you should be a freshman in college now, so I'm interested to see how fast you got by the end of senior year.

When I was a sophomore I only had a 5k pr of 18:08, but at my dirt slow school that was enough to net me the school record by around 30 seconds, and that made me think I was actually fast.

I didn't have a race plan going into the area meet that year, so I had no idea how fast to go out or where to position myself. Our area meet is generally one of the more competitive meets in the state, and featured some locally impressive names. When the gun went off I went for it and tucked into the lead pack of four (All seniors at the time, of whom two are running at UGA and one of whom is running at Furman). We went through the mile in 5:04, which shattered my mediocre 5:08 pr.

The next mile was downhill, and they went ~5:05, I believe, but I could only handle a 6:04. The last mile was a very steep uphill, and the winner closed in 5:12 for 15:55. I however, was deep in oxygen debt and collapsed at 2.5 miles. I got back up and walked it in for a 23:45, but the JV race had already started by the time I finished. It was a by far my worst high school race.

Just for reference, I'm now a senior and ranked 4th in the state.

Back when I ran in HS my slowest time was 17:20ish in my first 5k. Started Junior year and our coach had us "bandit run" a 4th of July 5k. Pretty much fell in love with the distance right there.

A teammate of mine ran a 32:xx first 5k and went on to run a 22:00 5k by the end of the season and then a 2:37 800/5:30 1500 by spring track. The body can be trained, but the mentality must be trained as well.

futurexc, tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been running? What is your fitness like (background ie previous sports, weight/bmi). My first 5k was 24:48 after a summer of training. I doubt I'd have broken 32 if I had a time trial the first week I started prepping for xc. I got down to 21:14 by running 25-40 mpw my freshman year but ran as slow as 25:15 that season. People at my hs considered that a lot ha.

I know I never ran over 20 min. But I didn't start XC until JR year.

First race ever was my slowest race ever. I ran it as a freshman after 3 total days of running. I ran 23:38. A week later I ran 21:32. Graduated with a 16:45 pr off of a max of 18 mpw. Injured through college.

DNF