Post College Running and The Curse of the 17-Low's

im still in hs but do the same training you used to or at least up it from what youre doing now

Make a training plan. Designate goal races and sign up for them now. Join a club or find people to train with at least 1-2 times per week. Its a hard realization but you just have to become re-obsessed like we were in college. If you really want to get fast, you have to MAKE time for running no matter how badly it sucks. 2-3 weeks of hard commitment will make it routine again.

Another helpful strategy is to increase race distance. Much easier to do solo marathon pace workouts than getting on the track to do real hard intervals all by your lonesome.

Best of luck, friend!

Is this not the next Harry Potter book?

YES. There was a period of a couple years where my "good" 5ks were 17:0x (mostly uncertified courses, so give or take a few seconds) and my "horrible" 5ks were still 17:30s, and my best certified road time was 17:20. It was pretty nice to have no doubt that I would run well under 18:00 for any given 5k (I'm a girl), but really frustrating that I couldn't improve.

I made some headway in training, with an unofficial 16:58 on roads, by going back to basics - consistency, moderate mileage (long run of 90mins-2hrs), and track workouts to address my weakness: speed. My 10k PR is 35:05. Given that, I should be able to break 17:00... but I've never broken 5:00 for the mile.

Are you a girl?

Ex D1 Runner wrote:

I've found a special hell for post college runners, I call it the "17 low's". In short, the 17 low's is, in my opinion, where most post college runners who still run are at. Real life gets in the way but you still train decently, you can run a 5k in 17ish low and dumb hobby joggers applaud you for it, you get complacent, you start to think if 17 low as "not bad".

Has anyone here gotten in this funk? Does anyone have any tips to get out of it, break through and PR again? I'm only 24 so I still feel like my best races are ahead of me!

Are you me?? Struggle to break 40 miles a week and probably never going to break 17:00

post college, you have to bust your butt to improve (because you'd have already got any easy improvements you were going to get). Some people do 13 runs, 120+ miles a week and don't get much faster than 17. Like the other poster said, you really have to become obsessed with running again. Its a lot harder when you're doing road races no one gives a crap about as opposed to major xc invites.