Goal of sub 19 minute 5k (Read 5724 times)

Hah! I knew it was only a matter of time! I'm right there with you. I ran 19:42 this past March, and definitely want to get under 19 this fall (not too many races around here in the summer). Let's roll!

Mileage, boys. All summer.

Damn straight. This is my summer of Malmo.

IMHO a sub 40 10k is A LOT harder than a sub 20 5k.

Therefore would a sub 60 15k be even harder? Just trying to follow your logic there.

IMHO a sub 40 10k is A LOT harder than a sub 20 5k.

Well yeah, since a 40min 10k is equivalent to roughly a 19:15 5k.

It was only 5 weeks ago that sub-19 looked like a forgone conclusion. I had run 19:06 and 19:02 already this spring, plus 3 other longer races that were in the 18’s on the equivalent performance charts. My last 10k said 18:37 on Daniels and 18:32 on the McMillan calculator. Then greed caught up me with as I contnued chasing the big high of setting new PR’s every weekend. On June 1, hours after running an especially hard 8k, I felt like I’d run the Pike’s Peak Marathon. I was completely wiped out and knew I might have crossed over the line. Later in the week I developed a low-grade fever that was off and on for much of the month. I thought if I just ran easily on days I had no fever that I could push through it. To some degree it worked. Finally I started to feel normal during other daily activities. However, on most runs my legs have continued to feel like lead, even though I’ve been taking it easy. Except for an aborted set of mile reps last Saturday I have done nothing but run slow, easy miles since June 1. This morning I ran a 5k to see where I’m at—6:10, 6:26, 6:37, :40 (19:53) was the result. Although I think I will probably come back and run some more good races, at my age you always wonder if you will ever make it back to where you were doing during your most recent hot streak. I’ve seen too many guys who are up in the years and going great guns suddenly see performances fall off a cliff and not come back. Anyway, count me in. I will be starting marathon training next week but plan to run some some 5k’s along the way. Best chance for a good time will be Banana Chase in SF on Sept 14. I was hoping someone would start this thread and couldn’t have picked a better man for the job than MichiganFlyer. Good luck to all.

I'm in! Haven't run a 5k since May, and I've only run two so far this year. Times were 19:02 and 19:40. I've just recently decided to step it up from 4 days of running per week to 6. We'll see how that goes! Tentative weekly schedule: Sunday: Long (12-15) Monday: Off Tuesday: 7 miles, including 5000m tempo OR 5x1000 at 5k pace Wednesday: 5 easy Thursday: 8 easy with 6x30 second striders Friday: 5 easy OR 5 with hills Saturday: 5 easy What do you guys think of this schedule?

That seems quite doable. I thought 40 mile weeks would be tough but when you run 12-15 on Sunday you only need 4-5 miles a day on average the rest of the week. I have gotten lazy since breaking 20...only ran 28 miles the past week with nothing fast really. I had a half hearted attempt at a 6 minute mile midweek but after a 2:57 half I gave up and finished in 6:15.

Count me in. I have been following the sub-20 5k thread for a while...congrats on smashing that one MichiganFlyer. Now it's on to the next milestone, and it doesn't appear that you are too far away from it. I haven't done much 5k training. I am in the early stages of fall marathon training now. Still need to get my mileage up quite a bit higher than it has been, but it'll get there. Haven't run a 5k race in ages, but there are a few local ones around that I am interested in trying, especially since I now have a son who is getting more into running and is urging me to run them with him. Ran a 4-mile race several weeks back that was at 6:11 pace...not quite sub-19 5k, but close. We'll see what happens. Good luck to all who have this as one of their goals. I will update my progress with any race results as I run them.