Wise Words from RAers (Read 1104 times)

You can get there without a doubt if you are willing to do a little more. First thing would be to run on at least one of those days you take off each week. Compared to several I see posting here your mileage is ok, but it's still not a lot. The next thing would be to a add a weekly track workout. It doesn't have to be a ****buster either...I'd say that 5 x 1K at about 8-10 seconds per mile slower than your current 5k race would do just fine. Take a half lap recovery jog between each rep. If you are real consistent, religiously doing them every week, you will see measurable results. You can rotate between those, 800's, and 1200's if you want. Just do about 3 miles worth of each. A lot of people will tell you to run them harder, do 400's and a lot of other stuff, but I can tell by your PR's that endurance/threshold work is what you need most at this stage. Running your intervals a little slower and taking a short recovery will boost your lactate threshold if you keep doing them. You should also be able to recover from them quite easily. So that's it...run an extra day or 2 each week, and throw in those intervals. There are other things you can do but this is enough to get you to your goal. I see that you have been doing some nice long runs, so that's good. I picked on you because you're easy...if you've run 20:40 off of what you've been doing it's not going to take drastic measures to get your sub-20. I would say to everyone else who has posted here that the best thing you can do is increase your mileage. Don't think that because 5k is a short race that you don't need lots of endurance to run it well. That's a very common misconception.

HTFU is way overrated. MTFU is hwere it's at, where M = mileage. But you know that.

From JakeKnight quite recently on carboloading: "A solid week of heavy pasta and Gatorade will not make you run like the wind. They'll make you a chubby diabetic likely to crap yourself and pass out. Simultaneously. "