What is my potential? 43-min 10k on very little training

The younger one is, the more likely one will be able to train like an 800/1500 runner without breaking down. Runners race Marathon usually no better than (32.5 to 35) times one's 1500m personal best. Eg. race 1500m, 3:50, race Marathon not much better than 2:14.

Bare Minimum Runner wrote:

I've been running for about a year now after not running for about 10 years since my high school cross country days.

Your HS XC times are a much better guide to your potential than your time in a race you haven't seriously trained for and ran under adverse conditions. Why not just give us your HS track and XC PRs?

Go run an all-out 200 meters on the track and let us know what you ran. Then we can give you a better idea.

This is above avg but not by much. Arturo Barrios ran 17 min 5k in HS gym class with no training. He once held 10,000 record.

(32.5 to 35) * 1500m PB wrote:

The younger one is, the more likely one will be able to train like an 800/1500 runner without breaking down. Runners race Marathon usually no better than (32.5 to 35) times one's 1500m personal best. Eg. race 1500m, 3:50, race Marathon not much better than 2:14.

Thanks, that's a pretty useful metric. I'm a sub-6 miler now and can currently bust out a 5:5x mile. But during sophomore year in high school (my best and last year of track), my 1500 time was 4:45, and my mile time was 5:07. We would run anywhere from 4-6 miles everyday, 5 times a week, which comes out to 20-30 mpw. My coach focused more on personal development and having fun rather than actual hardcore training. I definitely would have definitely gone sub-5 if I had done 4 years of track and not focused so much on academics during my junior year, which I ultimately don't regret. My favorite distance was the mile, which my coach agreed to and placed me in.

My best and last year of XC was during my junior year. I preferred the 2-mile distance, with a best time of 11:40 for a flat, grassy 2.1 mile course as an example (that's a 5:33 mile pace). I would finish hilly 3-mile courses in about 18 minutes. After cross-country season was over and I didn't train for a few months beyond doing occasional runs 1-2 times per week, I ran one local 5k in 19:10, but I definitely could have done better if I had properly trained.

I relied on the "sit and kick" approach a lot since my speed tended to be better than my aerobic endurance. My coach decided to make me the school's top JV runner, so I was always in 2nd, 3rd, 4th places and won a bunch of medals. It felt good being one of the fastest guys in races with more than 100 kids. In varsity I would have been mediocre at best.

I was encouraged to do track during my freshman year of high school, when my PE teacher noticed me regularly running sub-6 miles and always being the 1st or 2nd guy in a class of about 200 kids. I was regularly smoking the XC JV kids, who did proper training whereas I just swam in my backyard, biked around the neighborhood, played basketball, and sprinted to class when I was late.

anxiously striated wrote:

Your HS XC times are a much better guide to your potential than your time in a race you haven't seriously trained for and ran under adverse conditions. Why not just give us your HS track and XC PRs?

See above for what I was like during high school.

Question:

Just actually how "adverse" were the race conditions though? Would you LRC guys consider this to be hell or just about right?

65 F, 95% humidity, 63 F dew point, cloudy

I absolutely hate dew points of over 70 F, which would make me crash after a few miles. But in drier climates, I'd always feel pretty good on long runs. So say I were to run a 10k with temps in the 40s with low humidity. Maybe I would have cranked out a 41 or 42 minute time instead of a 43 minute time.

Run milage and find out. You could run years at 60mpw and bonk out at around 37:59 OR you could run 29:59. Go find out.

I predict that you never break 40 minutes because you are not serious enough.

Dev1295 wrote:

Run milage and find out. You could run years at 60mpw and bonk out at around 37:59 OR you could run 29:59. Go find out.

29:59?

To have the potential to run that, he should be running sub-40 off minimal training or even no training whatsoever.

Sledge_hammer wrote:

Dev1295 wrote:

Run milage and find out. You could run years at 60mpw and bonk out at around 37:59 OR you could run 29:59. Go find out.

29:59?

To have the potential to run that, he should be running sub-40 off minimal training or even no training whatsoever.

Hard to tell when you're running only few miles per week. Some people have massive potential for improvement.

Run medium mileage to find out what kinds of times high mileage might bring you. If you've been doing 20 mpw for a full year and can't crack 40:00, then cracking 30:00 on 100 mpw is highly unlikely. If you're doing only 5 mpw, hard to say.

I’m flabbergasted anyone is answering this question seriously. Some days LRC is basically Runner’s World.

The answer is not debatable: your BELOW AVERAGE (it IS below average. I have coworkers who have run 43 minutes for 10k doing nothing more than pickup basketball a few days a week during lunch) 10k time with the variables you provided cannot possible predict your future success. I will admit that asking for your past running performances would be slightly more useful, but even so: the mere way you pandered on in your original post, and then the fact that you tried to use weather conditions as a contributing factor in a race you admittedly didn’t train for tells me (and any true LRC poster) all I need to know.

Here’s the only advice you need: try running consistently for 6 months or even a year, then go run a race and come back begging for validation.

43 min 10k on very little training

10 mpw (of intervals) along with living a generally active life is enough to get you in pretty good nick fitness-wise.

You’re nothing special.

Useful uselessness wrote:

I will admit that asking for your past running performances would be slightly more useful, but even so: the mere way you pandered on in your original post, and then the fact that you tried to use weather conditions as a contributing factor in a race you admittedly didn’t train for tells me (and any true LRC poster) all I need to know.

OP is just providing more details because most threads like this usually look like ...

Title: how do i improve to a sub-40 min 10k from my current 45 min PR

Content: discus

Replies: Give us more details please.

Lmao at all the trolling, negativity, and cyberbullying on letsrun. If op were to post on reddit, redditors would be pleasantly shocked by his natural talent.

Race conditions were similar to the Abu Dhabi Marathon, which Wejo said could not have possibly allowed for super fast times, so why is op being shamed for simply mentioning what the weather was like. We all know that humidity does slow people down even if not by much.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/12/inaugural-abu-dhabi-marathon-course-short-think/

Next up on letsrun: 4-minute flat mile? You are a slow, below average piece of failure. Any average d-head can jump off the coach and run a 4 minute mile with no training. You have no hope in life so why don't you quit running. Stop giving us weather stats because we hate math and we know that weather does not affect any runners.

I predict you could shave 4 minutes off that 5k with a bit of training. Anything less would take a more formal approach. And yes, I agree with the previous poster, people on letsrun are nothing but high school bullies and sub elite wannabes who have absolutely jack going for them apart from inherent above average running talent, so yes, there types will say 33:00 is slow and that you’re pathetic if their PR is 32:40. In the grand scheme of things, 43 is quite fast compared indeed to most recreational sportsmen, a lot of in-shape sports people would find it respectable to run one mile at that pace.

Basically, if you aren’t in the Olympics, people here will consdier you slow. Anything under 50 minutes gets you respect on runnersworld forum.

Letsrun:

Run slower than them and they will mock you as a disgusting hobby jogger failure.

Run faster than them and they will accuse you of doping and using EPO.

Run just as fast them and they will tell you to gtfo because they don't want competition.

Don't run and they will make fun of you as a fat, lazy couch potato.

But just ignore the troll comments and you will find a lot of gold-standard content from real pro's here. Sad that the good stuff has to be buried under all this high school bullying junk everyday. The admins should be more selective of posts here if they want to make this a better forum.

How's that all-out 200 meters coming along? Any times for that yet? Your 10K potential is highly dependent on your basic speed.