19 minutes to 18 minutes 5K

the Monday session with 400m @ 75 seconds doesn't have very much to do with what you are trying to achieve. your current race pace is 94.1 seconds per lap and your goal pace is 86.4 seconds per lap so 75 seconds is way too fast to be running 400m repeats. if you want to include work at faster than race pace you would be better off making them shorter, 200m - 300m, at around 5 seconds per lap faster than goal pace, so you want 6 - 8 x 300m @ 60s (3:00 recovery), something like that.

for the Tuesday Tempo session I think you should break it down into chunks with pretty short recoveries, something like 6 - 8 x 800m @ 3:20 (90s recovery). if you can get the recovery down to 1:00 make them longer, say, 5 x 1000m @ 4:10 (2:00 recovery) and again work on reducing the recovery. you can also extend your cool down after this session. a 1 km cool down is not really very much at all.

Friday's session is very interesting. 3:50 per km is race pace for a 19:37 guy, so if you can run that session as written that suggests to me that you should be running them a little faster, or shorten the recovery a little.

strength training twice a week during the summer seems a little excessive for a 5000m runner, but that would depend on what specific work you are doing in each session, and 42km per week is not very much mileage, but that would depend on how old you are and how long you've been running.

good luck.

Last season I went from 19:0x to 18:09 in the 5k. A few things I noticed:

- Run more miles. 42k is barely anything. I would try to double that to like 80k, but obviously gradually and making sure your easy runs are easy enough. Make your warm-up/cool-downs like 3-4k each and bump your long run to over 16k. Also try to get to 6 days per week with an extra easy run.

- I would replace one of your hard days with an easy day, probably either of the track workouts. Generally I like to structure my week with 3 easy days, a track workout, a tempo, and a long run. Any more than that and you're asking for trouble.

- Some periodization would be helpful too. You don't need to be doing 400s during the entire training plan (definitely not as quick as you're doing them either). Usually you'd start by building mileage, then incorporate some short speedwork for efficiency (along with moderate tempos), and then bring in the tougher 1k-mile intervals around 5k pace.

- Don't be afraid to vary workouts. Doing the same workouts week after week can contribute to burnout. Vary the number of reps/paces, change up tempo distances, incorporate fartleks.

- Most importantly, sign up for races and get yourself in race situations. This will help you develop race plans and understand how your body responds in durress.

Last year I my training kind of dwindled over the summer and I slipped to 19:30 in an all out effort. I simply boosted my mileage and a WEEK later RAN 18:23.

About a month later on nothing more than steady miles at a higher volume I ran well under 18.

It really seems miles are the key. I am almost 50 before you guys start going on bout speed training specificity etc.

your volume is so low I bet you could go way faster than 18 just need to increase your traing a lot. Also in my opinion the strength training is great but could get more benefits using that time running at this point

Probably volume increase will help and keep doing the structure you are doing, due to my low mileage it’s easy to tell where I am fitness wise. If im doing 20-30 miles per week during marathon training (yeah I know) my 5k (Parkrun aka not Track) is usually low 18’s if/when I stop Marathon training volume and go below 20 miles per week the 5k time reduces to high 18 and if less than 20 miles per week, all out is mid 19’s. Sounds similar to another poster. Depending on your age, previous fitness, injuries and other life stresses I’m sure increasing the weekly mileage would help.

Get you the best coach ! I suggest JS.

Some genius on these threads once said the key workout is "one hour easy, repeat often". I read that and will not forget it.

I'm not the most credible contributor here but have achieved what you're looking to do. I suspect you would benefit from increasing weekly miles with easy runs. And from a longer long run (maybe every alternate week).

I think you could even drop one of the faster workouts. One tempo + one fast workout per week should be adequate, more might increase risk of injury.

How old are you though? That might be relevant.

thanks i'm 58

RunOrDieTrying\ wrote:

thanks i'm 58

I did not write this. Someone replied in my name although it's registered. Strange. I'm 29.

RunOrDieTrying wrote:

RunOrDieTrying\ wrote:

thanks i'm 58

I did not write this. Someone replied in my name although it's registered. Strange. I'm 29.

He has the / mark in his name bro.

Going from 16 to 15 5K or 15 to 14 5K or 14 to 13 5K require a combination of possible increase in mileage and possible increase in intensity of longer workout such as 7 x 800m at 3000m pace, 6 x 1200m at 5000m pace &/or 5 x 2000m at 10000m pace. To improve 5K from 19 to 18, just improve one mile performance. Take one mile time from 5:35 to 5:05, most likely 5K performance improves from 19 to 18.