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How much is enought for sub 18:30? (Read 2516 times)

    So says the 16 year old...  

     To the extent he was referring to the OP, I don't think he's way off. 

    "If you have the fire, run..." -John Climacus

    L Train


      It didn't appear to me that he was referring to the OP.  But I was wrong one other time. 

       

         To the extent he was referring to the OP, I don't think he's way off. 

         

        very true! 

          I'm currently a highschooler training for the upcoming XC season, I want to know how much volume I should have by mid to end summer per week, I just finished my first 35mile week and feel great, if my body cooperates I plan to up next week to 40miles. My goal for this season is to get to sub 18:30 5k, my most recent 1600m time is 5:15 and I dont have a recent 5k time but my PR is 19:44.

           

          So let me get this straight; you are a young aspiring "athlete" who wants to know what would be the MINIMUM amount of work you'll need to do to achieve grand performance of 18:30 for 5k?  One thing is for sure; I'd much prefer some young kid whose 5k PR is 21 minutes who wants to know what's the MAXIMUM amount of work he could do without breaking down so he can shoot for 15-minutes.  A typical letsrun message board question...  So many young kids want to know what the minimum work they have to put in to achieve the bottom-of-the-line achievement...  Maybe I'm just getting old (or have gotten old); but whatever happened to "young and reckless" and get out and almost kill themselves with no guarantee in sight?  No wonder we don't see Jim Ryuns or Gerry Lindgrens or Steve Prefontaines any more.  They like to talk about Pre because it's cool; but his heart is dead.

            Going to have to disagree here. Yes I think 19 is a reachable goal for most healthy men, however there are certainly some whom that is near the limits of their ability. This becomes especially true if you started running later in life, sub 19 is a much different barrier for someone who was been sedentary most of their life and now at 45 wants to run sub 19 than for someone who is an up and coming high school freshman from an active, athletic background. 

             

            There truly are people out there though for which 19 is at or near their physiological limit. As a 16 year old mid 17's runner its easy to forget that you have some measure of talent , and it can cloud perspective a bit. It's easy to think I got to 17 in a few years with maybe 30 or 40 or less mpw, anyone must be able to get to something as slow as 19 with some effort. My friend is a pretty good example of this, he has been putting in decent mileage (40 mpw or so average) for about a year and a half now, and I would certainly say he isn't training to bad. Periodization, relaxed easy runs, tempos, hills, intervals on season, etc, etc. He only recently broke 21. He doesn't come from an athletic background, has a goofy stride, and a massive lack of speed, especially from someone in their low 20's agewise (16.5 100m, 74 400m).

             

            Seriously?  Are you kidding me right now?  You're in your early 20s and you're already capping yourself with 40MPW and 19-minute 5k as possible LIMIT?  Gimme a break...

            Shoe


              Going to have to disagree here. Yes I think 19 is a reachable goal for most healthy men, however there are certainly some whom that is near the limits of their ability. This becomes especially true if you started running later in life, sub 19 is a much different barrier for someone who was been sedentary most of their life and now at 45 wants to run sub 19 than for someone who is an up and coming high school freshman from an active, athletic background. 

               

              There truly are people out there though for which 19 is at or near their physiological limit. As a 16 year old mid 17's runner its easy to forget that you have some measure of talent , and it can cloud perspective a bit. It's easy to think I got to 17 in a few years with maybe 30 or 40 or less mpw, anyone must be able to get to something as slow as 19 with some effort. My friend is a pretty good example of this, he has been putting in decent mileage (40 mpw or so average) for about a year and a half now, and I would certainly say he isn't training too bad. Periodization, relaxed easy runs, tempos, hills, intervals on season, etc, etc. He only recently broke 21. He doesn't come from an athletic background, has a goofy stride, and a massive lack of speed, especially from someone in their low 20's agewise (16.5 100m, 74 400m).

               

              I agree that saying some time is always achievable for everyone, or for everyone doing enough, is ludicrous.


              As to your friend, though, he hasn't been running long enough or enough mileage per week to have any idea what his limits are... I only say this because I would have thought I was much worse off if I considered my abilities at that low of mileage and that short of a time running.  I saw huge improvements much later at much higher mileage.  I'm still never going to be a great runner, but I have worked my way into even winning the female's division of small races from time to time.    (The mileage in very purposeful workouts as you mentioned.)  I have finished last in a race at that previous point in my running career mentioned.  Not anything against you or the intent, as I absolutely agree with the heart of your post, but I hate seeing people limit themselves or "allow" limits in others that might set them back.  

                Why dont you just continue to build your mileage -- as much as possible and go for Regionals, or state or a XC or track Scholorship.........National Championship, Olympic Trials........

                 

                I WISH I WERE YOUNG AGAIN   Cry

                 

                At your age, and apparant ability, you could be rubbing elbows with the elites if you don't limit yourself.    Dont think 40 MPW and dont think 18:++      think train as much as you can inteligently train, and become the best runner possible....

                 

                You have WAY more potential than 18:00 for a 5K...............Go for it....Smile

                Champions are made when no one is watching


                Feeling the growl again

                  I would recommend to anyone, ESPECIALLY someone who is not even 20 yet, to stop thinking in terms of setting time goals and start thinking about setting the goal of continuously improving.  It is ok to set a time goal for a race or something, but once you set a long term time goal you create mental barriers for yourself that create physical limits.  And, as Nobby indicates, it becomes a game of "just enough" rather than "do what I have to do to keep improving".

                   

                  I ran in junior high...2-mile, nothing spectacular, 17:30ish in 7th grade and 12:57 in 8th grade.  First two years of HS not great either, 20:30ish and 19:37.

                   

                  Then I decided I wanted to improve.  So over the summer I just worked out as much as I could.  It wasn't even all running; a ton of it was biking.  I'd just get on my bike and head into the wind, and when I got tired I'd turn around and go home.  All I cared about was improving, I had no time goal in my head.

                   

                  Near the end of the summer a funny thing happened.  We did an informal team training run, I ran around town with the guy who had been our #4 runner the prior year.  Toward the end of the run he told me I had to slow down, I was killing him.  Now, this was a guy who I had never been within 90sec of in a race the prior year.  A few weeks later we had our first meet and I ran almost 18 flat I think, 2nd on the team and made our top runner work for it...and by the end of the year I was 17:20ish and beat him too.

                   

                  Senior year I fixated on that 17:00 barrier.  That's all I thought about and what I tried to pace my races around.  I failed and ran 17:01 as my best.  My first two years in college were the same way, I fixated on that barrier and never got it.

                   

                  Then the winter before my junior track season I decided just to work my tail off again and see what happened.  I cross country skied hard with all my free time (too much snow to run much).  Season came around and I ended up knocking 2 minutes off my 10K and 45sec off my 5K.

                   

                  I had learned my lesson by then and post-college just focused on improving.  I kept running more and more and PRs got faster and faster.  At any point outside of that one year where I ran all my PRs if you'd told me where they would end up, I would have laughed at you and not believed. 

                   

                  If you limit yourself to what you can see on your side of the horizon, you're unlikely to reach over it and see what is really there.

                  "If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does.  There's your pep talk for today.  Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

                   

                  I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills

                   

                  AmoresPerros


                  Options,Account, Forums

                    ... about setting the goal of continuously improving.  ....

                     

                    Indeed, this is a thread for kids, and not old folks.

                    It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.

                      Indeed, this is a thread for kids, and not old folks.

                       

                      One option would be to measure yourself differently. Perhaps using age-graded tools to look back on your PRs? That said, all of us enthusiasts can get better.

                      And we run because we like it
                      Through the broad bright land

                        Indeed, this is a thread for kids, and not old folks.

                         

                        sure, but you're still pretty fast

                          Seriously?  Are you kidding me right now?  You're in your early 20s and you're already capping yourself with 40MPW and 19-minute 5k as possible LIMIT?  Gimme a break...

                           

                          Oh, goodness no. 

                           

                          I was just trying to say that their are certainly some, especially those starting later in life, for whom 19 may well be the fastest they will ever run. To say that if your running 60 miles a week and aren't breaking 19 you aren't training correctly just isn't true, since it fails to account for factors like age, athletic background, disabilties, gender, etc.

                           

                          Myself, I'm going to run 12:36.XX :Big grin

                           

                          EDIT: Really like what spaniel said, it becomes too easy to get super fixated on a time goal, and then especially if you don't meet your goal it can be easy to get frustrated, especially if you felt like you put in good work trying to get there.

                           

                          EDIT2: Man, that was a poorly organized post by me. I totally agree shoe, that I, nor my friend, have any idea what his limits, or for that matter mine, may be. I was just pointing him as an example of someone who has been doing decent training/mileage and isn't at 20, let alone 19. But running can be funny like that sometimes, and 6 months from now he might be running in the 18's, ya just never know. 

                          They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. Golf is more complicated than that. "If I am still standing at the end of the race, hit me with a Board and knock me down, because that means I didn't run hard enough" If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. "Don't fear moving slowly forward...fear standing still."

                          dallasboycows


                            if your running a 5:15 mile and have the aerobic base you should already be able to break 16:30.  If you want to maximize your potential build a good solid base and test your MAF.  Try to use the 180-age formula for your training HR.  People have so much more potential than they realize.  A 18:30 runner could be running 16 probably if they didn't first get the base.  anaerobically you can get 2 atp per glucose whereas you get 36-38 in most peoples what they consider normal training zones.  But if you slow down you get 460 ATP per fat molecule. If you train your body to utilize more fat and less glucose, your potential is MUCH greater.  In fact for 5k, there should be little if any anaerobic training.  But if you don't want to spend the whole summer going slow and base building, I would still stick to stuff that is not anaerobic as you don't want chemicals and hormones such as cortisol tearing down your cells and destroying your aerobic system.

                              if your running a 5:15 mile and have the aerobic base you should already be able to break 16:30.  If you want to maximize your potential build a good solid base and test your MAF.  Try to use the 180-age formula for your training HR.  People have so much more potential than they realize.  A 18:30 runner could be running 16 probably if they didn't first get the base.  anaerobically you can get 2 atp per glucose whereas you get 36-38 in most peoples what they consider normal training zones.  But if you slow down you get 460 ATP per fat molecule. If you train your body to utilize more fat and less glucose, your potential is MUCH greater.  In fact for 5k, there should be little if any anaerobic training.  But if you don't want to spend the whole summer going slow and base building, I would still stick to stuff that is not anaerobic as you don't want chemicals and hormones such as cortisol tearing down your cells and destroying your aerobic system.

                               

                               5:15 mile is more like 18:00 5k, not sub 16:30.

                               

                              Pretty darn sure most of the stuff regarding the physiology is badly misunderstood. The numbers are right but I don't think running and racing works the way your trying to claim it does.

                               

                              I'm sure some of the more knowledgeable people will comment though so I'll leave that to them. 

                              They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. Golf is more complicated than that. "If I am still standing at the end of the race, hit me with a Board and knock me down, because that means I didn't run hard enough" If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. "Don't fear moving slowly forward...fear standing still."

                              MrH


                                 5:15 mile is more like 18:00 5k, not sub 16:30.

                                 

                                Yeah ... for the high schoolers the kids running sub 16:30 are also running around 4:30.  Adults with more years running might have more aerobic endurance and less miler speed, but nothing like 16:30/5:15.

                                The process is the goal.

                                Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.

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