A 12-Week Training Plan to Smash Your 5K PB

In a country that seems obsessed with crazy distanced ultra events there is still merit to running fast. Training to run a fast 5km is much less time consuming than preparing for a 90km slog between Pietermaritzburg and Durban that is for sure and, as a result, can be a nice challenge to undertake for those who don’t have the time or available excess energy to spend hours and hours pounding their respective pavements. Covering 5km in a race is obviously much less physically demanding than running for 6-12 hours but trying to run a fast 5km is not easy and can be just as rewarding as completing an ultra. The beauty of the distance is that you are not incapacitated for weeks post-race and can have a crack at your best times on numerous occasions throughout the year.

It used to be the case that it was hard to find 5km races in which to test ourselves. This is clearly a legacy of the aforementioned mileage addiction that the South African running community suffers from. Fortunately we now have Park Run. A weekly 5km event at hundreds of different locations around the country. They are marketed as ‘recreational’ type events and all shapes, sizes and speeds take part. Some walk, some run with their dogs but there is no rule against giving it the beans and every event has an element of competitive runners who use their regular Park Run to compete against others and themselves, trying to better their own performance.

The 5km is an interesting distance. When we are in good shape we should race a 5000 at an effort which sees us operating at above our anaerobic threshold (AnT). This threshold is the theoretical heart rate level at which our body starts to fall short of the demand for oxygen that the muscles require. Well-conditioned runners should be able to operate around AnT for about an hour but a 5km should take most of us less than half of that. Therefore, we should be focusing at an effort above threshold and that requires very specific training.

To follow is a twelve week schedule which will target this ability to perform above our threshold from the start to the finish of our chosen Park Run. The key sessions are intense but short. A great challenge as a workout but all focused on the goal of smashing our personal best at the local event of our choosing. We will divide the 12 Weeks into three blocks of 4 weeks each. At the end of each block will have a bit of extra recovery leading into an effort at our chosen Park Run venue. We will hope to see a nice progression in time over the three efforts that we do.

PHASE ONE

This first four weeks is focused a lot on technique and running form. We will do hill repetitions on Tuesday up a fairly steep hill but for only 200m with an easy jog back to the start as recovery, which should take us at least one and a half times as long as the uphill effort does. Although these are excellent cardiovascular efforts and a good way to build strength in the driving muscles of the hamstrings and quadriceps, we especially want to focus on our posture and technique. We don’t want to bend forward from the hips. Rather, we are looking to lean into the hill while maintaining a straight line through our hips, spine and neck. Instead of trying to drive off aggressively from the calves, we want to focus on pulling ourselves up the hill with the big muscles in the hamstrings and driving through the hips to fully engage the powerhouse gluteus. Arms should be fairly relaxed in our normal carriage rather than pumping like a sprinter.

The second key session is on Thursday and here we are working above our goal pace for the 5km but for fairly short intervals with long, almost complete recoveries between each interval. Again, these are excellent efforts that will target the VO2 effort level, which is where we will be wanting to operate when doing our race effort, but our main focus for now, is on improving our leg turnover and holding good form and posture, as we were in the hill reps on Tuesday. We want to run fast but this should only become difficult in the last 100m of the 400m intervals and not really be all that hard to sustain throughout the 200m intervals.

The weekend long runs do not need to be all that long, especially by South African standards. During these we again want to concentrate on running with good form and posture and they should be run at a slightly higher pace than our weekly recovery sessions. We will also add in a few quality periods where we increase the pace in order to stimulate the upper ends of our aerobic zone but these should never feel really hard and we should always finish feeling like we could have done more or gone quite a bit harder.

In the fourth week we will have a hit-out at our chosen Park Run. We allow a little more recovery in the days leading up to it and we do an activation session the day before where we do 30 second accelerations up to our goal race pace. No need to go faster. This should be comfortable over only 30 seconds. The recovery between these will be another 30 seconds of easy running.

The Park Run itself should be a full gas effort as fast as we can go but we want to pace things so that we hold an even effort throughout. Obviously the pace will depend on the nature of our chosen course but we have two opportunities to experiment with our pacing strategy before our third attempt in Week Twelve.

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Hill Reps 10:00 w/u & c/d 8 X 200m hills @ 8/10 RPE	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	VO2 Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 5 X 200m / 200m walk 5 X 400m / 200m walk 5 X 200m / 200m walk	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 nice and relaxed and easy @ 65-75% of max HR	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Hill Reps 10:00 w/u & c/d 8 X 200m hills building. Starting easy and getting faster as you go.	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	VO2 Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 4 X 400m / 200m walk 4 X 200m / 200m walk 4 X 400m / 200m walk	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 @ 65-75% except for 10:00 in the 2nd half @ 80-90%	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Hill Reps 10:00 w/u & c/d 8 X 200m hills alternating, odds @ 8/10 & evens @ 9/10	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	VO2 Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 6 X 400m / 200m walk 6 X 200m / 200m walk	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 @ 65-75% except for 2 X 5:00 @ 80-90%. 1st after 10:00 and 2nd before the last 10:00	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Hill Reps 10:00 w/u & c/d 8 X 200m hills all @ 9/10 RPE	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Rest and stretch	Pre-Race 20:00 easy with 5 X :30 accelerating up to 5km race pace	PARK RUN Flat out effort with 10:00 w/u & c/d	Rest and stretch

 

PHASE TWO

The second block of four weeks is where we work on our bodies ability to hold a high effort level of effort as efficiently as possible. We should have some good snap in our legs after the first phase but now we are going to do some harder work. We are actually going to be running slightly slower in our efforts on Tuesday and Thursday than we did in Phase One but the recovery periods are now significantly shorter. This will not give our bodies enough time to deal with the admin that comes from running at those effort levels, forcing it to get better at doing it. Slightly more scientifically put, we will be stimulating the body to increase the amount of oxygen it gets to the working muscles under intense load while efficiently dealing with the biproducts of producing the energy required for our muscles to operate at these high levels of exertion.

Our threshold interval sessions on Tuesday should be run at a pace close to what we are aiming to average for our goal 5km. This should be relatively comfortable for the first few reps but will become increasingly difficult as the session progresses. Every week we will increase the ratio of hard to easy efforts in the set, which will then ensure that the body is forced to keep adapting and improving through the four week block of training.

The tempo session on Thursday will be more focused on our heart rate as opposed to the  pace we are running but the resultant speed from these efforts will probably end up being not much more than 10% slower than we are aiming at for 5km. The goal during these sessions is to concentrate on holding good form while running at an uncomfortable pace. Trying to stay as efficient and relaxed as we can throughout.

Our weekend endurance sessions are capped at the hour but during this four week period we want to perform these over a more undulating route than we did in Phase One. Our base effort for these sessions is comfortable but we do want to increase that effort on every hill that we encounter. Using the downhills and any flat sections in between to return to our overall average heart rate.

We want the same effort in the Park Run at the end of the phase as we had in the first one and, conditions allowing, our aim is to go a bit faster this time.

 

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Threshold Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 8 X 2:00 hard / 1:00 easy	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo 5:00 w/u & c/d 30:00 steady and controlled @ 85-90% of max HR	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 nice and relaxed and easy @ 65-75% of max HR	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Threshold Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 6 X 3:00 hard / 1:00 easy	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo 5:00 w/u & c/d 2 X 15:00 @ 85-90% of max HR with 5:00 easy in between	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 @ 65-75% except for 10:00 in the 2nd half @ 85-95%	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Threshold Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 5 X 4:00 hard / 1:00 easy	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo 5:00 w/u & c/d 20:00 @ 85-90% 10:00 @ 90-95% No recovery in between	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 @ 65-75% except for 2 X 5:00 @ 85-95%. 1st after 10:00 and 2nd before the last 10:00	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Threshold Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 4 X 5:00 hard / 1:00 easy	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Rest and stretch	Pre-Race 20:00 easy with 5 X :30 accelerating up to 5km race pace	PARK RUN Flat out effort with 10:00 w/u & c/d	Rest and stretch

 

PHASE THREE

Our final block of four weeks is where we add the shine to our preparation. The Tuesday sessions are now aimed at a higher speed than we were holding in Phase Two but we have a lot more recovery. This is known as reverse periodisation. The intervals become shorter and the ratio of hard to easy decreases. Opposite to what we did in Phase Two. This will improve our speed and will capitalise on the anaerobic conditioning that we developed in the preceding phase. Our Thursday sessions are still focused on adding to that anaerobic ability though and these gradually increase the amount of top end effort that we put in. Our Sunday long runs return to the approach that we took in Phase One over flatter routes but the efforts we include are increased to ‘very hard’.

We end the phase with our final full gas Park Run and this one should see new records. We have had two opportunities to perfect our pacing strategy over our chosen course and there will be nothing left to do but smash it!

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Speed Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 3 X 5:00 very hard / 3:00 easy in between	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo Build 5:00 w/u & c/d 10:00 @ 80-85% 5:00 @ 85-90% 5:00 @ 90-95%	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 on a rolling route @ 65-75% but with efforts up to 80% on the hills	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Speed Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 4 X 4:00 very hard / 3:00 easy in between	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo Build 5:00 w/u & c/d 5:00 @ 80-85% 10:00 @ 85-90% 5:00 @ 90-95%	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 on a rolling route @ 65-75% but with efforts up to 85% on the hills	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Speed Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 5 X 3:00 very hard / 3:00 easy in between	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Tempo Build 5:00 w/u & c/d 5:00 @ 80-85% 5:00 @ 85-90% 10:00 @ 90-95%	Rest and stretch	Endurance 1:00:00 on a rolling route @ 65-75% but with efforts up to 90% on the hills	Rest and stretch
Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Speed Intervals 10:00 w/u & c/d 6 X 2:00 very hard / 3:00 easy in between	Recovery 20-30:00 60-70% of max HR	Rest and stretch	Pre-Race 20:00 easy with 5 X :30 accelerating up to 5km race pace	PARK RUN Flat out effort with 10:00 w/u & c/d	Rest and stretch