Mastering Your 5km Race: Essential Training Tips and Strategies
Your Questions answered:
“Hey Coach D, what's your view on training for a 5km PB attempt? What should I prioritize? Thanks!”
One of the most popular race distances thanks to the global success of ParkRun which is a 5km free-to-take-part event that now has a location just about anywhere you find more than a few individuals living and who love running. With that comes some serious competitive athletes looking to either get a personal best on their own 5km performance, win their local event, or take the course record. Below are key tips for successful 5km racing
Intensity zones
Begin to understand/measure/know your pace zones is critical to this journey.
The first step to this journey is to run a fast 5km to get your pace for that level. As a coach, I use TrainingPeaks to build relevant training zones into training programs for athletes.
Intensity Part Deux
Sustained running is important, such as tempo work which is often popular in run programs. However, for instance, tempo is often run 10s per km slower than your 10km race pace. 10km pace is usually the pace where the lactate threshold speed is.
Two key concepts:
A) We want to go a little faster than the lactate threshold level to expose muscle cells to higher levels (of lactate) so that relevant structures such as MCT1, MCT4, and the energy factories called mitochondria. The 5km race pace is perfect!
B) 5km race pace activates very high levels of all fiber types to achieve high levels of fitness. 5km race pace also sits around 95% of VO2max and it's the perfect sweet spot to get adaptations in oxygen uptake and running efficiency.
Perform 5km race-specific workouts
That leads to our next key point, and that's we want to do intervals at a 5km race pace (95% of VO2max) and this often involves much shorter distances than your race to allow that pace to be performed and gain the appropriate benefits
3x 1600m with 1min recovery (most specific)
6x 800m with 30s recovery
12x 400 with 15s recovery (spend the most time at race pace and high VO2 and lactate levels).
It's an aerobic sport, dammit
90-95% of the energy produced in a 5km is aerobic and becomes significantly more as duration increases. So go longer than 90 minutes if you can in zone 2 and if you are an advanced runner, 120 mins is a good target. As your slow twitch fibers energy reserves are depleted around 90 minutes, you begin to use larger amounts of faster twitch fibers to continue the run. Depleting these fibers will increase further adaptations but at a lower intensity level and less fatigue than faster interval sessions.
Fuel
During your intensity sessions, make sure you consume around 60-90g of carbs per hour of activity. Never go into a hard session in a fasted state or forget to take fuel during the session. Cortisol is a cruel mistress for the hard-training athlete.
Low glycogen levels in the muscle, mean the brain will limit the ability to fully exercise intensely, and to complicate matters, a very hard workout can reduce muscle glycogen by 50-85% as well as empty your livers stores.
5-10g of carbs per kilogram of body weight is a good place to shoot for (low-carb zealots, sorry).
If you want help with further questions, discussions, consultations, or coaching. Please don't hesitate to reach out to darrin@thethreshold.coach
@darrinjordaan
@wattfarming
Train Hard and Prosper!
Darrin Jordaan
MSc (Med) Biokinetics WITS
HMS (Hons) Sports Science UP
BK 0016934
CSCS
UCI Level 1 Cycle Coach
IronMan certified coach
Comments