How Anyone Can Run A Faster 5km

I spent more than 10 years as a professional athlete and ran a fair few 5Ks including the park run world record of 1348 and my own personal best of 1320. so hopefully I've got some tips that are going to be useful for you they help me to take more than two minutes over my personal best during my career and they're useful to anybody no matter what time you're looking for so let's head out for a run and go through my top five tips for Success so give this video a thumbs up if you thought I'd do straight into my 5K already because that's a mistake that loads of people make is you don't do a proper warm-up so if you're going to try and ask your body to run the fastest it's ever run before because you're running a 5k PB then you need to be ready to go you need to be ready to run at the speed that you're going to go at which means doing a proper warm-up and we're going to talk about something called VO2 kinetics which sounds scientific and boring but I'm going to try my best not to make it boring so let's get stuck in with the warm up okay so three quick exercises the first of these is dynamic leg swing so I'm going to keep my legs relatively straight and I'm essentially going to be warming up my glutes hamstrings and hips I don't have amazing hamstring range so I can't actually swing it very high but looking to do 12 or so on each leg starting with small movements and then making it bigger but not going so far that you actually hurt your back a little bit and then swap legs next into lateral lunges so take a step to the side and then sit back and push back up essentially going to stretch the inside of this leg but also work your glutes which you'll need to run a fast 5k aiming to dig roughly eight each side and then change sides so next up we're going to do a skips I'm going to start by bouncing on my toes and then we're going into a high knee position so the perfect running form opposite arm opposite leg toes pull to shins using your glutes and your hamstrings to pull your legs back underneath your body for a nice foot contact and we just bounce to about 20 meters doing this and then we're done okay exercise is done if you want any more ideas for Stuff check out this video from Manny where it'll take you through a whole bunch of different ones for your warm-up but the warm-up's not over I started what for me will be about a 10 minute jog which I'd recommend that you definitely do a jog as well as the exercises and then I'm going to follow that up with some race paced strides but not only that I mentioned VO2 kinetics earlier and essentially what that is is your body's operating capacity so how quickly you can get up to top speed physiologically and there's some really good science behind taking on two 30 second efforts at a really hard Pace you won't want to do it but the science is really strong so here's my first one okay so now I've started my 5K and yesterday I'm not getting all out because I've got to speak to you and I can't do two things at the same time now there's something else I should have done before starting my watch and actually that's working out what race Pace I should be running at now there's nothing worse than the idea of going off too fast hitting a wall and not being able to maintain that pace but actually often I think a bigger problem is that people aren't able to go to the absolute Max and push hard enough because they don't know where that red line is so that's something you need to experiment with and ultimately find out in training so how do you work out your race Pace because if you've got a big training block ahead of you you want to know that all of your intervals and particular parts of your training are going to be done at the right pace you could start off with a predictor workout either at the beginning of your training or maybe part way through to gauge your progress and see how realistic it is in fact check out this video where Sarah and Alice do exactly that to get an idea of what it looks and feels like but then basically what you should do is start with your current 5K BB look at how long you're giving yourself in order to achieve your new time and pick something realistic so if you've run 27 minutes you're not going to break 20 minutes within 10 weeks but you could break 26 and then try out that race Pace in your training sessions in order to then adjust it based on what feels sensible once you've worked out your race Pace then it's tempting to do every single run at that pace but please don't that'll be a disaster because ultimately to run the best possible 5K you can you need to train above and below that race Pace that you're targeting to give you a good feel for it and to improve your overall Fitness and you also need to run longer than 5K and you your longest run of the week now I'm about to talk you through an entire week of training to see how you could break it down but before I do leave me a comment to let me know what your favorite kind of run is that you do each week and why I'd love to find out this has four runs a week but we also have a three day or a five or six day a week version which I'll explain in a second this is week four of the plan and our week runs from Sunday to Saturday starting off with a Sunday long run of 60 minutes this is banking a run that's longer than 5K because if you're running further then a 5K distance should start to feel more manageable and easier to run Monday's a rest day followed by Tuesday which is an easy to study eight kilometer run followed by eight lots of 100 meter strides strides are awesome but I'm going to come on to a while later on Wednesday is where speed comes in and this is the session of the week where you'll either be practicing race Pace or potentially running faster this session is five lots of 1K at race Pace with two minutes recovery in between each repetition it's early on the plan so it should feel hard but it shouldn't feel impossible at some time in the future you can run the whole distance without those recoveries then Thursday is a rest day followed by a threshold run on Friday running 8K total with one and a half k at the start at an easy Pace followed by 5K at marathon pace and then another one and a half K to finish at an easy Pace this pace is slower than 5K Pace to keep the legs ticking over and building up your mileage during the week and then Saturday's another rest all of these runs work together to make your 5K faster if you want to only do three days a week then here's the three-day version or if you're looking for more than four runs a week here's the five or six day equivalent check the link in the video description if you want to download the full plans okay so let's get this out of the way there's no magic piece of Kit that's going to save you five minutes off your 5K time but actually there are a few things that can make you faster most notably carbon plated Racing shoes now they're an investment they cost a lot of money but they well categorically make you faster so they help you to run faster but also they help you to recover from your harder sessions I definitely wouldn't be recommending they're the only pair of shoes that you own but if you have the luxury to invest in a pair alongside a pair of everyday trainers then it's definitely worth it now I've carbon plated Racing shoes aren't for you then you should focus on getting a pair that support you and fit you well but if you are looking for a pair on what to look out for then ultimately the lighter the shoes they are the more responsive they are the faster you're going to run if you're not sure where to start then go to your local running store oh wow I'm running up a hill now really hard to deliver this or check out the running Channels video of the best running shoes now do you remember I mentioned strides earlier well these are my secret weapon you'll see them a lot in our training plans in groups of four or eight lots of 100 meters usually at the end of one of your runs now to run strategy just run a 9 out of 10 effort so pretty hard effort but not absolute Max for around 100 meters and you focus on really good running forms so staying nice and Tall good knee and arm Drive foot contact under your body and the reason they're so good is they help you to focus and ultimately learn to have good running form at the end of a hard effort so definitely look to invest in some strides as some stealth speed work okay stride's done let me know in the comments if you're going to try them out on your next one I promise you that you'll make a difference but now what you need to do is watch this video next which is going to talk you through some more advanced drills that I guarantee will help you with your running

Channel: The Running Channel

Views: 80,526

Keywords: How to run, running, running tips, training for beginners, how to start running, running training, training advice, 5k run, couch to 5k, running challenge, world record, personal best, best running watch, best running shorts, parkrun, how to run faster, best running videos, 5km run, workouts to improve you run, speedwork, 5km races, olympic workout

Id: znDgwkQiXhE

Length: 7min 12sec (432 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023