5K - speed vs distance

Mavrick_RN · May 2013

I would like to run 5K. Today I "ran" 3 miles in 40 minutes (that's 4.5 mph or a 13 minute mile). Now I am wondering if I should just keep running the 3 miles and try to get faster or run a shorter distance faster and try to go longer.
I am 57 and have arthriits so I'm not very "fluid" in my motion. I'm 225 so approx 50 lbs overweight. Never been a runner but I can ride my bicycle 40 miles without problems so would say I am in "fair" shape. I use a HRM and am comfortable running with a HR approx 138.

Interested in opinions from you fitness fiends!

DavPul · May 2013

Sign up for the first available 5k in your area. Like, is there one tomorrow? If so, sign up. It's an accomplishment, not a race. Note your time, keep training, try to beat that time on your next 5k. The only person you're competing against is yourself.

froeschli · May 2013

i am working on 10k, and i find as i add distance and run more regularly, the time just drops off the shorter distances...

Azdak · May 2013

When you are at the point where you are just "capturing the distance", then you will initially benefit from increasing the distance. Building up your endurance "base" lays the foundation, and just increasing your distance will help improve your time at the shorter distance as well.

You can also add a little bit of interval work -- e.g. running a little faster for a couple of minutes, then recover. I would keep that a small percentage of your total volume now until you get your long run into the 5-6 mile range.

scottb81 · May 2013

Sign up for the first available 5k in your area. Like, is there one tomorrow? If so, sign up. It's an accomplishment, not a race. Note your time, keep training, try to beat that time on your next 5k. The only person you're competing against is yourself.

I agree with this. Run a race soon and set a mark on the wall from which to improve.

Running distance is mostly dependent on your aerobic capacity. That is your body's ability to move oxygen to the muscles and the muscles' ability to use the oxygen to convert fat and glycogen into energy. The energy used to run a fast 5K is over 90% aerobic so a good training program will be focused on improving aerobic capacity with a little bit of speed training added at the right time.

The best way to build aerobic capacity is to run often and run long. You should start with what you are capable of doing now and build towards running 4 days a week with 3 of the days being an hour long run and 1 day being a 2 hour long run. Once you have built to doing that for about 12 weeks you will have a solid endurance base and will find yourself racing much faster than right now. You could then introduce some specific speed training for further improvement.

A few things that are important.

1. Building aerobic capacity is a long term endeavor. Regardless of your age, if you start a consistent training program you will continue to see improvements for at least around 7 years.
2. You will also see significant improvements just from losing weight along the way.
3. Running at the correct target intensity is important for targeting the specific aerobic adaptations you are looking for. When building your aerobic base you should be running at 70 to 80% max heartrate. Testing yourself for actual max is best but until then you could use around 168 for the calculations. 70 to 80% is 117 to 135. Running harder than that is not better because first it will not effectively develop the aerobic adaptions you need and second it will reduce you daily and weekly volume because of the need for increased recovery.
4. There is a time and a place for puke-worthy high intensity training but it will be much more effective if you build an aerobic base first and add the speed on top of it.

Chieflrg · May 2013

bump for the great info

Mavrick_RN · May 2013

Yes! Thanks all. This is exactly the info I wanted. I knew this was the place!

slowturtle1 · May 2013

Sign up for the first available 5k in your area. Like, is there one tomorrow? If so, sign up. It's an accomplishment, not a race. Note your time, keep training, try to beat that time on your next 5k. The only person you're competing against is yourself.

I agree with this. Run a race soon and set a mark on the wall from which to improve.

Running distance is mostly dependent on your aerobic capacity. That is your body's ability to move oxygen to the muscles and the muscles' ability to use the oxygen to convert fat and glycogen into energy. The energy used to run a fast 5K is over 90% aerobic so a good training program will be focused on improving aerobic capacity with a little bit of speed training added at the right time.

The best way to build aerobic capacity is to run often and run long. You should start with what you are capable of doing now and build towards running 4 days a week with 3 of the days being an hour long run and 1 day being a 2 hour long run. Once you have built to doing that for about 12 weeks you will have a solid endurance base and will find yourself racing much faster than right now. You could then introduce some specific speed training for further improvement.

A few things that are important.

1. Building aerobic capacity is a long term endeavor. Regardless of your age, if you start a consistent training program you will continue to see improvements for at least around 7 years.
2. You will also see significant improvements just from losing weight along the way.
3. Running at the correct target intensity is important for targeting the specific aerobic adaptations you are looking for. When building your aerobic base you should be running at 70 to 80% max heartrate. Testing yourself for actual max is best but until then you could use around 168 for the calculations. 70 to 80% is 117 to 135. Running harder than that is not better because first it will not effectively develop the aerobic adaptions you need and second it will reduce you daily and weekly volume because of the need for increased recovery.
4. There is a time and a place for puke-worthy high intensity training but it will be much more effective if you build an aerobic base first and add the speed on top of it.

Great info!! I have had the same question about distance vs. speed and I've noticed my speed has decreased as I've been running longer distances. This was very helpful! Thanks!

runfreddyrun · May 2013

The best way to build aerobic capacity is to run often and run long. You should start with what you are capable of doing now and build towards running 4 days a week with 3 of the days being an hour long run and 1 day being a 2 hour long run. Once you have built to doing that for about 12 weeks you will have a solid endurance base and will find yourself racing much faster than right now. You could then introduce some specific speed training for further improvement.

he wants to increase the speed of his current 5k. i have this same question as well. why wouldn't he just gradually increase his speed or maybe even build up to 4 miles instead of 3? why would you advise him to run an hour three days a week and 1 day a week run 2 hours if that is not his original goal? i'm not challenging you, i'm just trying to understand. i could see how this would be helpful if he wanted to run a 10k or even further than this, but this seems excessive just to increase speed on a 5k.

wouldn't some intervals and speed work help his time?

scottb81 · May 2013

Sign up for the first available 5k in your area. Like, is there one tomorrow? If so, sign up. It's an accomplishment, not a race. Note your time, keep training, try to beat that time on your next 5k. The only person you're competing against is yourself.

I agree with this. Run a race soon and set a mark on the wall from which to improve.

Running distance is mostly dependent on your aerobic capacity. That is your body's ability to move oxygen to the muscles and the muscles' ability to use the oxygen to convert fat and glycogen into energy. The energy used to run a fast 5K is over 90% aerobic so a good training program will be focused on improving aerobic capacity with a little bit of speed training added at the right time.

The best way to build aerobic capacity is to run often and run long. You should start with what you are capable of doing now and build towards running 4 days a week with 3 of the days being an hour long run and 1 day being a 2 hour long run. Once you have built to doing that for about 12 weeks you will have a solid endurance base and will find yourself racing much faster than right now. You could then introduce some specific speed training for further improvement.

A few things that are important.

1. Building aerobic capacity is a long term endeavor. Regardless of your age, if you start a consistent training program you will continue to see improvements for at least around 7 years.
2. You will also see significant improvements just from losing weight along the way.
3. Running at the correct target intensity is important for targeting the specific aerobic adaptations you are looking for. When building your aerobic base you should be running at 70 to 80% max heartrate. Testing yourself for actual max is best but until then you could use around 168 for the calculations. 70 to 80% is 117 to 135. Running harder than that is not better because first it will not effectively develop the aerobic adaptions you need and second it will reduce you daily and weekly volume because of the need for increased recovery.
4. There is a time and a place for puke-worthy high intensity training but it will be much more effective if you build an aerobic base first and add the speed on top of it.

Great info!! I have had the same question about distance vs. speed and I've noticed my speed has decreased as I've been running longer distances. This was very helpful! Thanks!

The speed in training runs may decrease as the distance increases. This is not important as long as the intensity is right. Over time, as aerobic capacity increases you will see less degradation of pace as distance increases. Pace will increase also at a constant intensity.

The best way to see if your program is working is to schedule a race and test yourself. Pace is really only important during a race, where it matters. If you decide to test yourself by racing just realize that it will take about 6 weeks between tests for changes in fitness to become significant.

A quote I liked from a respected coach on a running forum went along the lines of, there are two reasons he generally saw with people's training programs when they were not improving. Either they were running too fast all the time in training, or their training volume was too small.

My observation is that those two problems often are related. Too fast all the time makes you too tired to increase volume to the point where real improvements occur. Too fast all the time with a volume increase also generally results in some kind of injury that stops training altogether.

ToughMudderAddict · May 2013

You've got all the information already here that you need. My piece of advice? Don't over do it unless you want to wind up like me in a stupid cast with a fracture.

scottb81 · May 2013

The best way to build aerobic capacity is to run often and run long. You should start with what you are capable of doing now and build towards running 4 days a week with 3 of the days being an hour long run and 1 day being a 2 hour long run. Once you have built to doing that for about 12 weeks you will have a solid endurance base and will find yourself racing much faster than right now. You could then introduce some specific speed training for further improvement.

he wants to increase the speed of his current 5k. i have this same question as well. why wouldn't he just gradually increase his speed or maybe even build up to 4 miles instead of 3? why would you advise him to run an hour three days a week and 1 day a week run 2 hours if that is not his original goal? i'm not challenging you, i'm just trying to understand. i could see how this would be helpful if he wanted to run a 10k or even further than this, but this seems excessive just to increase speed on a 5k.

wouldn't some intervals and speed work help his time?

It all goes to the point of how the body creates energy to run fast over extended distances. Energy is created by burning fat and glycogen. This requires oxygen. The more oxygen that is available the more and faster energy can be created. The amount of oxygen that the body can transport and use is called "aerobic capacity". The best way to increase aerobic capacity is to run often and run long in the "easy run" training zone - 70 to 80% max heartrate.

Here are a couple of references that explain it well. These were written by coaches with solid credentials. Arthur Lydiard, the author of the first, coached Olympic Gold Medalist runners.

Athletic Training by Arthur Lydiard, available free at http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/pdfs/al_training_eng.pdf

http://www.angio.net/personal/run/hadd.pdf

Intervals and other speed work will increase 5K racing quickly in the short term. However, and this is a big one, the improvements you get from that training is dependent on the size of the aerobic base that exists. Additionally, those improvements will max out in around 6 weeks and that training will no longer generate improvements unless the aerobic base/aerobic capacity is built to a higher level by running often and running long at 70 to 80% max heartrate. Running too much speed training without an adequate amount of easy aerobic training will degrade performance over time.

Any race over 800 meters relies primarily on aerobic energy systems. Even the 5K relies on the aerobic energy system for over 90% of its energy needs.

astronomicals · May 2013

Do you want to be a runner? If not you can ignore most of what was suggested.

What is your goal? Do you want to run a marathon someday if you could? Or are you more interested in just losing weight and becoming fit? Personally I have zero desire of having a runner's physique.

Theres also something to be said for what happens when you start doing large amounts of cardio in training for distance running. Your body makes adaptions and you get less bang for your buck.

That being said, you could increase speed or distance or both. Id be wary of suggesting that you increase speed because you said your running stride is less than desirable. If I saw someone lifting weight with bad form I wouldn't tell them to push it.

blackcloud13 · May 2013

Great info on this thread. I'm looking to increase my 5k speed as well. I was going to ditch all my longer runs (13, 10 miles) , and concentrate purely on speed training for a couple of months - but seems like this is not such a good idea.

I have found that most of my improvements have come from mixing slower longer runs with going flat-out on shorter runs - they seem to somehow help each other

Oishii · May 2013

Another 'don't do what I did' for you:

I was trying to decide whether to do C25K or not, so decided to see if I could already run 5K or not first. I could, with no pain or unfortunate side effects. Did this a couple of times. Then thought 'If 5K is so easy, I should try upping to 10K.' No pain during, and basically the same speed as the 5K. Unfortunately, one of my knees was in pain for weeks after.

So I would recommend gradually building up if you want to run further, as there is more that can get in your way than oxygen.

scottb81 · May 2013

I have found that most of my improvements have come from mixing slower longer runs with going flat-out on shorter runs - they seem to somehow help each other

You broke the code. If you read any running training book that's exactly the formula you will find for success. Then the magic happens during a race where you are amazingly able to run faster for longer than you were ever able to do in training.

Azdak · May 2013

Scottb81: I am not going to repost the extensive thread of discussion. I have always agreed with you in principle and I welcome your voice against the shrill drumbeat of "HIIT, HIIT, HIIT" that has become so infectious.

I respectfully disagree with the volumes that you prescribe for someone who is starting out and just wants to improve 5K time. You don't need 2 hour runs to do that. I think that's a bit of overkill.

However, I am 100% in agreement as to the importance of "base" training and the synergistic effects of both endurance and interval training. Those who think that HIIT is the end-all and be all of exercise don't realize how much the endurance workouts that they look at so dismissively could improve their performance in their HIIT workouts. And those who do only endurance cardio would be surprised at how quickly their performance would increase with just a little interval work.

arl1286 · May 2013

If you want to improve your 5k time, you're going to need a variety of workouts. How often do you run? You should work up to one "long" run per week (it should start out just as an average length run for you, and every week or two, add half a mile or a mile to it), one day where you run shorter but focus on speed, and the rest should just be slow easy runs.

scottb81 · May 2013

Scottb81: I am not going to repost the extensive thread of discussion. I have always agreed with you in principle and I welcome your voice against the shrill drumbeat of "HIIT, HIIT, HIIT" that has become so infectious.

I respectfully disagree with the volumes that you prescribe for someone who is starting out and just wants to improve 5K time. You don't need 2 hour runs to do that. I think that's a bit of overkill.

However, I am 100% in agreement as to the importance of "base" training and the synergistic effects of both endurance and interval training. Those who think that HIIT is the end-all and be all of exercise don't realize how much the endurance workouts that they look at so dismissively could improve their performance in their HIIT workouts. And those who do only endurance cardio would be surprised at how quickly their performance would increase with just a little interval work.

I agree that the volumes I prescribe are aggressive. I probably should have been more clear in that if the goal is to run fast then these volumes are a goal to work towards, not necessarily something that someone should start doing right away.

To try and clarify myself, 90 minute and greater runs provide an aerobic training stimulus that cannot be achieved in shorter runs. However, nobody (without exception) can jump straight to 90+ minute runs without causing themselves a big problem in either over-training or injury. It is a goal to work towards in incremental stages. How long it will take someone to get there is impossible to say. There are too many factors involved including genetics, prior training history, and current fitness.

However, based on my involvement with the Galloway Training Program I feel pretty safe in saying that anyone without some sort of medical issue can get there and that the payoff in running fitness is large.

I also agree with the interval work as long as it's build on top of an endurance base and not in place of an endurance base.

5K - speed vs distance

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