Good 5k Training Plan (Read 94 times)

Could someone be so kind as to link me to (or describe yourself) a good 5k training plan?  I'm currently training for a marathon in May, but would like to switch gears towards maxing out my 5k potential afterwards.  My adult PR is 17:44, but I've never done any 5k specific training.  I'm fairly certain I could run a faster time than that right now as all of my speedwork for my marathon has been done at a 5:20/mile pace.  Any and all help is much appreciated.

Thanks Parklife. I’m hardly qualified to describe a good 5k plan, but I’ve made decent progress recently. It probably has as much to do with nice marathon build up last year as with anything I’m doing right now.

What I’m trying to do right now though is pretty close to this Jen Scherer sketch I found on Teif’s web site: http://www.tips4running.com/5K-Training-Schedule.html

Basically:

Two workouts: one tempo, one “interval” (time based on/off so sort of more like fartlek, but whatever you want to call it, at faster than tempo pace)

One “long” run: 10-14 miles moderate (like around or a few tics slower than marathon pace)

Fill in the rest with easy, two days a week running doubles.

Strength (and this is new to me since December), doing the circuits from Pfitz’s Advanced Marathoning twice a week.

That’s my plan for now. Will stick with it until it needs adjusting.  I personally run into trouble with shorter intervals, or hill sprints – my own fault as I inevitably do them too fast or too much and end up tweaking or pulling something.

There’s lots of other faster folk on here with good ideas though. Stalk some logs. That’s where the really good stuff is.

I used this one last spring

http://www.runnersworld.com/workouts/your-magic-number

and dropped about 45 seconds off my time (19:37 down to 18:52).  Granted I had put in some good base miles for a while before it, but I thought it was a decent plan anyway for sharpening up before the race.