Say for an adult male, lean, plenty of time to properly build up for it, doing proper things to prevent injury. I say duration because an x mile run is more stressful the slower you are but duration is much more universal. Looking for a long term goal for myself to build up to. Thanks
Bump
Around 8 hours I would say.
8 sounds right assuming you’re not injury prone and you’re able to still run 2 quality workouts a week. Six days of 1 hour and a long run of 2 hours. This would definitely be on the higher end of the spectrum for a 5k. I’m sure you would be fine off 6-7 hours.
do you actually mean "maximize?" id guess for ~80% of the population, the ceiling wouldnt be reached at 8 hrs. maybe 12, probably more like 14. more if youre adding xtraining (which is obviously not "running")
12-14 hours will result in injuries for most and won’t allow you to run quality workouts. 12-14 is marathon training.
Depends from person to person, but overall:
Elite runners (5K to Marathon) are usually somewhere between 10-14 hours, but they have got plenty of time for recovery, getting massages, ...
They're also pushing their body to the absolute limit.
8 hours per week of running might get Rupp to 13:30, but he needs those extra 2-6 hours a week to get to 12:58.
If you're serious about running and want to run close to your best without sacrificing too much, I'd run 7.5 hours: 1 hour a day, 90 minute long run, 2 (semi-)hard workouts.
If you really want to get every last second out of your body, add a 30 minute easy run every morning. That makes for a total of 11 hours a week - which equals about 110 miles per week for a fast runner - and that should be all that's necessary for a 5K (in my opinion)