How hard is it to run sub 14:00?

pretty hard

try it and let us know

Not too tough. 30 mpw was my max.

lmao letsrun is the best. Everyone here has a sub 13 min 5k pr on here right? Mine is 12:45. What a joke

OregonProject=DopingProject wrote:

lmao letsrun is the best. Everyone here has a sub 13 min 5k pr on here right? Mine is 12:45. What a joke

Only barely related to what this guy said, but here's some trivia:

No one on Earth has a PR of 12:45 (though Daniel Komen did run between 12:45.00 and 12:45.99 once in 1996).

In fact, 12:45 is the slowest time (truncated to the second) that no man currently claims as a 5000m PR.

But seriously. Who here even runs/ran that fast? What did you do to get there?

No one wants to give him a serious answer I guess. I ran 13:47 way back in college and also currently coach at the D1 level.

Honestly, it wasn't as hard as any of my other seasonal 5k PRs. Make sure you have a comprehensive training plan and let your fitness progress over the years. The biggest contributer to me being able to run that time was a combination of high mileage, marathon pace work, speed maintenance year round, lots of tempo work constantly, and very little hard workouts on the track.

I improved quite a bit (I was barely under 9:30 for 3200m in HS) later on in college and there were a couple of things that I was doing wrong initially. When I was slower, I did zero marathon pace work. My longest tempo was 4 miles throughout the year and I did not even know how to do that correctly. I ran too hard on my easy days and didn't run long enough. Also, my track work I went faster than goal pace if I could handle it....basically a recipe for disaster.

Inserted 8-10 mile marathon-pace sessions in the summer/winter phases, slowed down on easy days, slowed down on tempo days, slowed down on track workout days and only did intervals maybe once every two weeks. I apply the same philosophy to my team and have gotten good results. Basically, touch on the over-distance strength more and also learn to relax when you have to run the intervals. Easy days mean EASY runs. Running isn't super complex but people definitely know how to muck it all up in training.

P.S. Try to go to a good program. My coach was a nice guy but the team wasn't the greatest. I ended up working out on my own at the tail end of eligibility and self-coaching myself. Thankfully he was cool with that.

Nice. How much did you increase your mileage to go from 9:30 3200 to 13:47 5000?

Fun fact wrote:

No one on Earth has a PR of 12:45 (though Daniel Komen did run between 12:45.00 and 12:45.99 once in 1996).

In fact, 12:45 is the slowest time (truncated to the second) that no man currently claims as a 5000m PR.

snow blow wrote:

Nice. How much did you increase your mileage to go from 9:30 3200 to 13:47 5000?

I ran 45-50mpw my senior year of high school.

College was:

Freshman: 70mpw

Sophomore: 70mpw

Junior: 75mpw

Senior: 80-85mpw

I got tossed into too big of an increase out of high school and it took me a very long time to get used to it. Glad I didn't have major set backs.

Sorry, double post. I forgot to put that in my 5th year I reached 90mpw

This makes workouts sound too easy don't you have to put in some grueling work at some point? Here is some advice from a sub14 guy who ran 13:31 in the 60s.

The reason why many people fail to achieve their full potential is that they never really push themselves hard. Although you may experience a lot of discomfort towards the end of a session like 6×5 minutes fast, the satisfaction of having done it lasts all day.

A It is quality, not quantity, which counts. That 13.53 5km came off an average training mileage of just over 30 miles a week for the previous three months. The more quality sessions you can handle per week, the better you will become.

B The most effective methods are interval training – for example, 15x400m, repetition runs (5x2000m), hill training and running races. This may conflict with my idea that “running is fun” – it depends how ambitious you are.

C The recovery is as important as the training. Avoiding injury should always be a priority, and this means warming up properly before running fast and looking after yourself after the training. It is also important to train on soft surfaces most of the time, rather than road or a synthetic track.

D Start with a training volume you can handle and only move up when you have got the best out of the low mileage – or if you are moving up in distance.

E Periodise your training into blocks of three of four months, with a specific goal. This maintains your sense of purpose.

F A runner who trains slowly will race slowly. Even a marathon runner should train like a 10,000m runner, because this will improve his oxygen intake. He will obviously do more miles, but he will keep in the quality sessions.

Read more at

http://www.athleticsweekly.com/featured/bruce-tulloh-on-the-truth-about-running-36461#KATMVShhhoCYK5fG.99

"Former sub 14:00" didnt say his workouts were easy, just that he ran too hard in some workouts when he was younger. That certainly doesnt mean he never had hard workouts. But to add more workload, you can't cook yourself in one single workout or you've ruined your other workouts for the week.

Not trying to put words into his mouth, would be interested to hear what he says. I suspect he will say it was more about a whole lot of medium effort work replacing a much smaller amount of high effort work. In otherwords, instead of having 10 or 15 minutes of maximum discomfort in a given workout, he instead had 40 minutes at a theoretical 80% of maximum discomfort.

I would be cautious about taking a workout plan from the 60s though and holding it up as a gold standard. Of course there have been some very fast times run on low mileage and high quality. But far more have run fast on higher mileage. And the absolute fastest in absolute terms have done it on medium to high mileage (at least in the 5000m and up).

I believe there are probably some individuals who will run their absolute personal best on low mileage. But the best in the world today are clearly not low mileage.

Sounds a lot like what I have my team do; also sounds a lot like what WEJO and ROJO would advise.

nopainnogain2 - You sound very talented to have ran sub 14:00 off of mileage in the 30s, regardless of the previous PRs you might have had. Pretty envious of that. I don't have close to the talent you had so I really had to work at it in a different way. Honestly, the 13:47 wasn't any harder than any big race I had that year or any year since HS. Perhaps once a year I did a big "indicator workout" that was tough, but most of the "grueling" work just came from the day-to-day grind. My workout paces were never really hard, just "kind of" tough sometimes. The length of workouts would make them I guess mentally tough but I never went to the well in practice. Saved it all for the races.

P.S. I was actually really consistent once I started training like that. I ran low 3:40s in the 1500m and also ran within 5 seconds of that 13:47 three separate times that season. The 13:47 was my final race of college.

runnerdnerd and optional- Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. My big thing that I tell my athletes that I coach is "everything averages to medium" with regards to more quality work. We have had a lot of success doing that. The old coach had them training low mileage and focused a ton on quality and operating within training zones. Really reminiscent of what nopainnogain2 said. The team has improved a ton since we started using a more moderate training program. Average 5000m on the team last year was 14:28 and we have been pretty consistently (but frustratingly) an NCAA bubble team. I have coached a handful of sub 14:00/very low 14:00 guys over the years and they all were not exactly studs in HS. We did have one kid transfer out of a Power 5 school who ran low 9:00s because he didn't respond to a meat grinder program. He ended up running faster than me once he switched to a more moderate training style. He was just able to keep the ball rolling with training and never felt like crap anymore. Even got a kid who was slower than me in HS to run 14:01. I feel really strongly about smarter training as it has worked for me and my team. Guys feel pretty good in races all the time and THATS how they get confidence.

Former Sub 14:00's training looks very good. I wasn't by any means talented and only broke 16 minutes in high school by running 70-80 miles per week. Eventually broke 14 at the end of college coming off a long period of consistent 115-mile weeks, self coached. Train hard to reach your potential and remember that mileage is king.

My workouts are brutal as well, stuff like 10 by a mile at 10K pace w/relatively short recovery, 20 by 400 in 65s and perhaps the most important, 4 by 2K at 5K pace. Train hard and you'll make it.

Former Sub 14:00 - I would love to hear more about your training. What did the 90 mile week look like? What do you mean by speed maintenance year round? Is this hill sprints? Workouts like 20x200?

I am no where near that fast, but I know people that have, or potentially could based on other other times.

It is not easy, at all. While 8:57 is no longer considered an elite high school boys time (though certainly top in their state, possibly) that is the required pace to run 14 flat.

I know of one person that ran around 9:36 for 3200m in high school. He can now around 29 flat for 10k after over 10 years of solid training.

Jake Riley is another outlier example. Never broke 9 minutes, but has broken 28 minutes for the 10k. But the implication here is that both were still very talented, but likely waited to progress into heavier training and mileage.

You either need talent, or some talent and a lot of hard work. I am sure a lot of hs seniors expext their 3200 pace to become their college 5k or even 10k pace after 4 years, but that isn't usually a given.

A lot of it is how much they trained in high school. A 9:20 guy who ran 25-30 MPW vs double that will have a different upside in the subsequent years.