Good 5K Time?

GillianMcK

This is a age graded calculator which shows what your time is compared to other people of the same sex and age
http://www.runnersworld.com/tools/age-graded-calculator

With regards to improving every time, if that was acheivable we would all be competing at the olympics, you will get improvement fairly rapidly if you are working at it and then plateau, you can then look at interval training and tempo runs to improve again but you will always hit a plateau.

I think as well as you get older (no idea how old you are) that the shorter distance times get a bit slower but your longer distance times can continue to improve (think Mo Farrah moving from 10000m to half marathons), someone did explain this to me once but I can't remember the theory behind it.

My average time on a flat road race is 35min, trail runs can then increase to 43min, even in a 'race' type event I'm still out to enjoy myself, I'm not an elite runner that will be able to do it in sub 20min, but the longer I run the better my splits get (as a general rule, last night was not a good night from a running point of view).

I've noticed a difference in my trail hill running because for 8 weeks I have been really pushing myself to go as fast as I can for as long as I can, recover at walk and then push again, I can now run up the whole hill at a normal pace without stopping (8weeks ago I would be lucky to run at a normal pace for 1/4 of it).

I also have a spreadsheet set up that tracks my route, total distance, total time, average pace and splits, I can then compare to the last time I done the same route and notice any improvements which can be helpful if you feel you've had a bad run (had one a few weeks ago where I wasn't happy, felt it was worse than the last time, checked my time and had taken about 3min off the time and all the splits were better).