ONCE YOU’VE JOGGED your way to the finish at a Turkey Trot or cruised through a charity race, you might wonder just how fast you could go if you went all out for a 5K run (for the metrically challenged, that’s just over three miles). The distance is an excellent opportunity to test your speed, since you can likely aim to break the tape in under half an hour. There are also plenty of opportunities for time trials, since the 5K is the most popular distance for road races, according to Running USA (endurance event tracking service Ahotu had over 20,000 5Ks currently registered in its database). As many new distance runners make the mistake of leaping straight into the deep end by signing up for a marathon as their first race, you can show your smarts by making your goal to run a fast 5K first.
But don’t assume that the path to a PR will be an easy one. “I just want to warn people that just because it’s a shorter distance doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the same sort of respect or a healthy fear of the distance,” says Nick Willis, an Olympic medalist, run coach, and Tracksmith Senior Manager of Sports Marketing and Partnerships. “To be honest, the 5K is even more painful than the marathon in a different type of way if you go over that red line too early.”
To avoid that, you’ll need to lay the proper groundwork ahead of time. You can line up and finish a 5K race without training block you’d need for a longer race, with up to (and over) 20-mile efforts on training runs—but to perform at your absolute best, you’ll still need to follow a program that requires hard work and discipline. Jes Woods, a Nike Running coach who has helped athletes prepare for distances ranging from the 5K to ultramarathons, says that a good 5K program has a very specific focus.
“The faster you run, the more oxygen you consume,” Woods tells MH. “So training for a fast 5K is going to require a high aerobic capacity (VO2 max) and you need to be able to hold that high intensity for the entire race (lactate threshold).” Training sessions that will improve your VO2 Max will be “mission critical” to achieving your goals, Woods says, which means short, fast intervals at your projected race pace or faster. “Think of it as the size of a car’s engine, and we want a really f*cking big engine for the 5K,” she says. Then, you’ll need to do sessions to improve your lactate threshold (how much of your VO2 Max you can actually sustain for extended periods), which are tempo runs.
Ready to get training? Here’s everything guys who already run or are getting back into running after a break need to build up their speed and fitness over six weeks. If you’re only starting out and you haven’t raced before, wait until you have some more experience to give this a try.
The 6-Week 5K Plan
The first thing to know about your training plan is you’ll actually be working to build up your mileage (how far you run) and fitness for less than six weeks. That period will last for about four and a half weeks, Willis says. Then you’ll cut down your volume and back off the mileage (called “tapering”) in the 10 days before your race so you’ll be primed to peak for your PR performance.
Overall mileage per week will be important, so you’ll need to keep a close eye on just how much you’re running as part of the plan. He suggests starting with a target length for a long run workout, then determining how you can structure the rest of the week’s sessions to match your total goal for the week. So, if you aim for a 20-mile total in Week 1, you could start with a five-mile long run, then spread the remaining 15 miles out over the other days. You’ll increase that total number from week to week by a maximum of seven miles (with no more than two miles added to your long run, and the other five over the rest of your workouts), so the plan could be: 27 miles in Week 2, 34 miles in Week 3, 41 miles in Week 4, and 48 miles in Week 5. By Week 6, you’re in the taper, and your volume should shrink back to 35 miles, max. Willis notes that in his own programming, he has taken long runs of up to 18 miles at peak volume, but less trained athletes might be better served maxing out closer to 10 to 12 miles for their furthest.
Woods sometimes tells her athletes to use time as a target for their long runs, rather than distance. This can be a helpful trick to keep yourself from spiraling at the sheer mileage build. She recommends starting long runs 60 to 75 minutes at an easy to moderate pace at the beginning of the plan, then building up to 75 to 90 minutes. “I know some can’t wrap their head around minutes versus miles, so [aim for] six to 10 miles at the beginning of your training and building up to a max of 10 to 14 miles,” she says. “One caveat: I would also have an experienced runner practice some ‘fast finish’ long runs midway through their training cycle to work on fatigue resistance.” This means picking up the pace on the back half of the session, rather than maintaining a steady clip throughout.
Using total mileage or time rather than saying you should run a certain number of days per week is for more than just structural purposes. Willis says that keeping your total volume monitored will help to prevent injuries over the period. “You do not want to suddenly get a bone stress injury or a strained tendon,” he cautions. “Increasing by a maximum of seven miles a week, you’re gonna be able to stay in the safe zone, and your body will have enough time to adapt.”
There might be periods when you run multiple days in a row, but you can help to prevent burnout by staggering your hard effort training with less intense days (more on that shortly). At a minimum, each week should have one rest day.
How to Pick Your Goal Pace
Ideally, someone taking on this plan will have run a 5K race before and runs regularly, so you should have some baseline to work from to determine your goal pace. If you haven’t (or if you’ve taken some time off since your last race), Willis suggests using a pace calculator tool to determine what might be a realistic goal.
You can also solve this problem without running a full-speed 5K before race day by doing a shorter practice run. “If you’re not sure about a goal pace, I’d rather you run a time trial—like a one-mile time trial—and then use an online race predictor to get a more precise 5K goal pace,” says Woods.
Just make sure that you aren’t shooting for a target time that’s not consistent with your circumstances. “You need to use a realistic approach, like, ‘Where am I at compared to when I did it 15 years ago?’” he says. “Are you 15 pounds heavier? Are you more stressed? You’ve got three kids, and you can’t get out as many times as you used to? So be practical with that.”
The Types of Workouts You Can Use to Hit Your Mileage
In order to hit your mileage targets, you’ll need to take on different types of workouts throughout your week of training. We’ve already mentioned the long runs, which are exactly what they sound like: You’re running further than your other sessions, usually at a comfortable pace.
Willis says that his favorite type of workout to build up fitness is a tempo run. These should be at about 75 percent effort. If you’re having trouble gauging exactly what that means for you, Willis has some advice: “You’re going too fast that you can’t talk to somebody, but when you finish, you’re like, ‘I could have gone another mile or two at that pace if I’d had to.’” Start with a warmup, then aim to run 15 to 20 minutes at that 75 percent pace. If a full 15 to 20 minutes is too difficult, you can break up the workout into three or four five-minute sections, with a short rest between each set. You’ll do that once per week.
Tempo workouts: 20 minutes at 75 percent effort or 4 rounds of 5 minutes at 75 percent effort with 1 minute rest in between
Another type of workout you can use to rack up mileage is running hills. Find an incline, then push yourself hard for the uphill, then jog back down before you do it again. (You can also do this on a treadmill by changing the incline settings.) Willis advises aiming to do that eight to 12 times for 60 seconds. “The goal is that you can keep the same intensity, or even improve that intensity throughout the workout,” he says. Push hard, but manage your efforts so you can finish the workout.
Hill workouts: 10 rounds of 1 minute uphill a 80 percent effort with an easy jog down as recovery
You can also do easy or shakeout runs, which will be more relaxed than your speed work and shorter than your long runs. Woods suggests keeping these runs at “conversation pace” early in the training cycle. Ramp up the speed as the program progresses, but remember—these are meant to be easy.
When you slot those into your training, Willis suggests tacking on an extra component he calls “the connector and final building block” to your program: strides. These are short, progressive bursts where you build up to your race pace and beyond. Start slow for your first few steps, then run faster up to your race effort by the time you finish.
“You can get your legs turning over and have your muscles and your mechanics experiencing what the race pace that you’d be aiming for in a 5K,” Willis says. Add four or five strides of about 80 to 100 meters to cap off those lower-effort days to help build the base of fitness you’ll need to finish off the last bit of your race.
Stride workout: 5 rounds of 80 to 100 meters, progressively building pace
During your taper period (10 days before race day), you’ll need to switch up your approach. This is when you’ll use interval training, a type of workout that pairs intense efforts with recovery periods. This might look like 10 sets of 400 meter repeats on the track with a minute rest between each run, or running on the road hard for one minute, then resting for one minute. You’re aiming for “stuff that adds up to around 4,000 or 5,000 meters of total work at race effort,” Willis says.
Interval workouts: 10 rounds of 1 minute at 85 percent effort with 1 minute recovery; 6 rounds of 2 minutes at 85 percent effort with 2 minutes recovery; 3 rounds of 4 minutes a 85 percent with three minutes recovery
Once you’re about four days from your race, you should back off significantly. If you do anything at all, you should keep it slow.
Confused about how you can put all these pieces together? Woods suggests structuring your week like this:
- Monday: Rest day, with focus on recovery
- Tuesday: Hard interval work (VO2 max workouts)
- Wednesday: Recovery run and/or cross training
- Thursday: Tempo run (lactate threshold work)
- Friday: Recovery run
- Saturday: Long run
- Sunday: Easy run and strides
How to Run Your Fast 5K Race
Once you’ve trained and tapered, the last thing to do is to take on race day with the wrong approach. That starts even before the gun goes off, by putting your body through a warmup more than some static stretches and a jog around the starting area. “You want to put your body through some pretty strenuous work so that it’s not going to be a shock to the system when you suddenly get your heart rate up right at the beginning.”
To do that, he suggests taking 15 to 20 minutes for a slow jog about 45 minutes before the race is scheduled to begin. If you’re at a big event with loaded corrals full of people, the later you can make your way to the starting line, the better—Willis says maybe 20 minutes beforehand. In the last 10 minutes before you run, try to get two minutes of exercise that will drive up your heart rate. If you’re able to leave the starting area, you could do a few sets of strides. Woods says those strides should be focused on being fast: “end with three to six 20-second fast strides with an easy 60-second jog/shuffle after each,” she advises.
Woods also wants runners to remember that just because 5K runs are usually fairly laid back affairs, if you’re going for a goal, it’s time to lock in. Your buddy might just be there for the medal—but you took on an entire training cycle for your PR. “Do what is best for you on race day,” she advises. “For me personally, I don’t want to waste energy on conversations and socializing, so I prefer to warm up solo with my noise canceling headphones. No hard feelings on race day, be selfish.”
If you’re boxed into a corral early, try two minutes of bodyweight movements like star jumps, jumping jacks, or running in place. After that, rest for the final three minutes or so before the start. “That’s when you need to calm your body down to get it to recover from those exercises. But it’s still recent enough that when his gun goes off, it’s not going to be a sudden shock to your internal mechanisms,” says Willis.
Once the race starts, relax for the first mile and let your hard-earned training take over as you cruise to your target pace. “You want that first mile to go as controlled as you possibly can,” Willis says. “You want to black out.” When he races, he says he picks a “long song” like “Hotel California” to recite in his head so he can take his mind off the pressures of the first third. “I don’t want to use up those emotional reserves I have,” he says. “The middle part of the race, that’s the hardest part where you’ve really got to focus in.” To stay engaged, Willis says he talks to himself to push through the pain, affirming how he’s done the work and just needs to keep going.
“When you hit that final mile, that’s when all hell breaks loose,” Willis says. “That’s where you’re really going to dig deep. You get to decide who you want to be in that moment.” You’ll fight to keep your pace, but don’t keep any energy in reserve. “If you’ve got a kick, that means that you’ve held too much back,” he says. “Just summoning to hold pace is really how it works out.” If you do feel like you’ve still got something left at the end, he says to push harder with three quarters of a mile to go.
Once you finish, you might be feeling the pain from pushing all out—but you might also wonder how long you should wait to toe the line again to improve your time. Good news: You don’t have to wait long.
“The beauty about a 5K is you can put another one on the calendar pretty soon after,” Willis says. “It’s not like a marathon where you can really only do a maximum of two or three a year. You could do one in a month’s time or in three weeks’ time, and you really just need enough to get your emotional bank full before you’re willing to put yourself into that situation again.”
MH-Approved 5K Training and Race Day Shoes
For more options, check out our list of the best running shoes, tested by the MH team.
Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men’s Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.
