This, my musings (hopefully with some suggestions from others!) on achieving a sub-17 minute 5k. I have a good general level of running fitness (I have been running "seriously" for about 5 years), but have generally only averaged 20-30k per week. I'm aiming for a sub-17 minute 5k in July 2010.

Rather than following complex training programmes, I'm trying a "fire and ice" approach. In other words, I'm running one 5k race at the weekend as hard as I can, and then trying to fit in as many long slow runs as I can (typically about 2 hours+ at 05:30 - 06:00 km pace). This has upped my weekly mileage for last two weeks from 30k, to 70k.

The last four weeks of 5k runs have been 19:11, 18:48, 18:52 and 18:36. So it's coming down, but I only have about 8 weeks to go.

Next weekend I'm doing the Edinburgh Marathon (plan to run at less than 85% MHR throughout, so I don't do too much damage...)

Thoughts, anybody?

Many thanks for that - I'll try posting on the other forum and see if anything happens...!