Ready to crush a fast 5K? Brace yourself for a deep dive as seasoned runner and coach, Lucie Beatrix, unveils her top strategies for achieving that lightning-fast 5K you've been dreaming of. From steadily building a solid running base and hitting your mileage consistently to mastering the art of interval training, she's got you covered. Drawing from her own journey to achieving a 16:59 personal best in a 5K race, Lucie dishes out practical advice that could just be the game-changer in your running journey.
Coach Beatrix takes us on a journey through the race day, demonstrating when to unleash your full power and when to conserve energy. Peering into the running plans she offers her athletes, she shares how these strategies have led them to success.
If you can do it in a workout, you can absolutely do it in a race. So, tune in, get your running shoes ready and let's hit the ground running!
Ready to crush a fast 5K? Brace yourself for a deep dive as seasoned runner and coach, Lucie Beatrix, unveils her top strategies for achieving that lightning-fast 5K you've been dreaming of. From steadily building a solid running base and hitting your mileage consistently to mastering the art of interval training, she's got you covered. Drawing from her own journey to achieving a 16:59 personal best in a 5K race, Lucie dishes out practical advice that could just be the game-changer in your running journey.
Coach Beatrix takes us on a journey through the race day, demonstrating when to unleash your full power and when to conserve energy. Peering into the running plans she offers her athletes, she shares how these strategies have led them to success.
If you can do it in a workout, you can absolutely do it in a race. So, tune in, get your running shoes ready and let's hit the ground running!
Speaker 1:
Whether you're new to running or an advanced runner who's run several marathons, I think everyone can benefit from running a strong 5k yes, 3.1 miles and this episode is about exactly that or the kinds of speed workouts, weekly mileage and pacing strategy that I recommend for athletes that I coach that can help you to run a fast 5k. Who am I? I'm Lucy Beatrix. This is my podcast, and if you don't know a little bit about my story, I was not an athlete growing up, but I got into the sport and I started chasing some pretty competitive times and when it comes to the 5k, I think it's highly underrated how much you can do with this distance and I honestly think that even if you are a marathoner and you go after these longer distances or even had the half marathon, a 5k can give you that speed and that extra kick to help you in the longer distances. So if you're between marathons or between half marathons, I would suggest to you if I was coaching you and you were one of my athletes that you work on your 5k, and this is a really great time of year to do that, because it's the end of the year, it's cold, it's when a lot of people are taking an off season and that's when I like to push people to chase after 5k PRs and try to surprise themselves. So hopefully this can give you some some helpful tips and tricks that I've used for my own 5k and my 5k PR is a 16.59. So that means that I snuck under the 17 minute mark, which was a really big victory for me because I had been training on the track. I wasn't really training specifically for a 5k but looking back I see certain workouts that have worked for me that helped me get that 5k speed that I think you can use to, and it's actually not that complicated. One of the things I love about running is running is kind of like math. It's literally do this, you will get this. It is usually foolproof. If you can do it in a workout, you can do it in a race, granted the environment allows you to. So I'm going to kind of give you a little insight on what I know about that.
Speaker 1:
But the first step to getting in shape for 5k is having a base, having a running base, and to me this means consistent mileage. For a few months you could be running every other day or every two or three days, but just getting that time on feet for 20 to 30 minutes, easy running, no specific workouts, no care about speed or pace, but instead just getting out there and just logging the miles. And that can be really the fun part of just like training, with no end goal or no pressure to hit certain times. And so if you're in that base phase, I encourage you to enjoy it and just listen to music, listen to podcasts or audiobooks and just know that you're building the mitochondria or the density in your legs to be able to go after the speed and the faster stuff later on. But so the first step is to get that consistent mileage under your belt and then, once you've reached a weekly mileage, that is, either, I would suggest, 30 to 45 miles per week that's my suggestion for getting getting in shape for a 5k Once you've hit that amount, which could mean that you're running several three to five mile runs throughout the week, and then maybe a long seven to 10 mile run on the weekends. That then you can be a little bit more deliberate. So you check off the weekly mileage. You've got your base. Then you can start to attack some of these workouts Now my rule of thumb thumb is to run the distance or about three miles, which a five case, 3.1 miles.
Speaker 1:
Run that distance during an interval speed workout, and so that means you're taking breaks, you're not running 3.1 miles within this speed specific workout, but you're running three miles of that speed. So this could be a workout like six by 800 meters at goal 5K pace, 12 by 400 meters at goal 5K pace, or maybe even a little bit faster, and then the best workout is 5 by 1K at goal 5K pace, and so what I would suggest an athlete to do is start with the six by 800s the first week. The second week run 12 by 400. And then the third week do five by 1K and then, based on what you could run the five by 1K at, set a goal for what you want that goal 5K to be. If the pace that you're running those Ks at for the five by 1K ends up leading you to a 20 minute or predicting about a 20 minute 5K, start to do your workouts a little bit faster than that. It's kind of like a way for me, when I'm working with other athletes and I'm trying to determine for them what their goal should be Like, if you don't know if you're going for a 21 minute 5K or a 19 minute 5K. You just get started and start to do these workouts and it'll start to even out, or you'll be able to then determine okay, I'm able to hold this pace for three miles within a workout. This should be my goal, or even maybe set it a little bit faster than that so that you can keep chipping down and see if you can surprise yourself.
Speaker 1:
I look at my workouts leading up to my 5K PR and I was running most of my workouts just a hair faster than what my 1659 5K ended up being. So I was training towards something that was maybe more in the 1645 range, but I ended up running just under 17, which still was a really big win for me. But I at least had an idea of what to be trying to hit in workouts, if that makes any sense. So the first step would be do those three workouts in three consecutive weeks and get a sense of where you are fitness wise. That's a great check for, like checking yourself to see where am I fitness wise, what can I realistically go after? Because I think it's really important to set realistic expectations. Like don't try to immediately go out the gates trying to break 16 minutes if you're really in the range of trying to break 17 minutes. It can be tempting though, especially if you're training with other people, that you wanna be in the same level as them, and so you're pushing yourself a little too hard to see soon. That can actually set you back. You wanna be within your range and not try to run too hard, especially in the beginning.
Speaker 1:
Another beautiful thing about fitness is that it can improve as the workouts go on. So it means that when you do your first six by 800 meter workout, you might blow yourself out of the water. The second time you do it four weeks later or about a month later, where the next time you do six by 800 meters, you end up shaving several seconds off of each rep, and that's when you start to see the fitness improve. And so, ultimately, what you'll do is the six by 800, the 12 by 400 and then the five by one K, and then you take a week where you don't do any speed workout, you just run easy, and then you do that again. And so the next time you do six by 800 a little bit faster, the next 12 by 400 a little bit faster. You're probably having a sense of what you can realistically hit or like you're clear with what your goal is. And then the last workout you do before your five K time trial is that five by one K, with all of these are with 90 seconds rest. So it's so simple and easy to remember that you just do these three solid workouts twice and that last five by one K will determine what you're able to run a five K in.
Speaker 1:
I know that that's worked for me. It's totally foolproof for me. If I can run five by one K at a sub 17 minute mile or sub 17 five K pace, that's what I can do on race day and with my athletes that I coach it's the same thing. So, yeah, so you do those three workouts twice and you do a speed workout on either a Tuesday or a Wednesday, preferably on the track, and then a tempo progression workout on the weekend. So you're doing two hard workouts a week with the tempo progression Um, that, that pace, the paces that you're going to be hitting in that workout, where typically for me it was a 10 mile progression where I started super easy, and then around the second or third mile I just started to shave 15 seconds off per mile, negatively splitting, to finish the last mile fast, but not 5k fast.
Speaker 1:
So you're running 10 miles, two easy miles, and then, uh, 15 seconds faster, 15 seconds faster, 15 seconds faster, which means you're starting significantly slower than you're finishing and, um, that could look very different for you. You might want to start a little bit faster and not cut down so severely, but that was a workout that worked really well for me. And to do that once a week, mixed with the track day um, those are the two really, really hard workouts that you get into your legs, um that you supplement with easy runs, and what I mean by that is um that you have two hard days a week, but every other day of the week that you're on your feet running, you're running extremely easy. I'm talking Kenyon shuffle easy or several minutes per mile slower than your goal race space.
Speaker 1:
So if your goal 5k pace is a 530, this means running at an eight or nine 30 minute mile um just in between these really, really hard efforts, and the reason for that is that you want to be able to hit the paces, the really hard, aggressive 5k pace workout pieces on your hard day and your progression tempo run paces on your progression day. So the days in between are just about kind of like fluff, mileage and um, keeping that base and keeping your your body moving, but they're not about pace at all. And that's really invaluable, because I feel like I see time and time again, people running just too hard on their easy days, or what should be their easy days, and they're cutting into what they could do on the workout days and they're not able to hit those paces. So, um, so keeping your hard days hard and your easy days easy is crucial to being able to get in shape for a 5k. It's also a good practice for when you're getting ready for the race itself, because on the week of the race you want to be running extremely easy the days leading up to it and and like, truly like, dialing back. And I would also say that there's something about taking one of those easy days every week, or Taking an easy day to do strength or cross training, and for me, what I would do when I was getting in serious 5k shape Would be spending a day on the stair climber or doing an incline walk or a different kind of activity.
Speaker 1:
It could be a bike for some people, doing something else to flush out the legs, but still be like working hard, like you're still sweating a lot, but it's finding a different way to use other groups of muscles that you don't use when you're running and strengthen them. So doing a hard stair climber for an hour was something that I I swore by because I it made me stronger from the inside out. I could feel the activation in my glutes and in my quads and that seemed to give me that extra Burst or that extra boost when I would then go try to tackle a fast 5k. So when it comes to the actual race the actual 12.5 laps around a track or out on the course of your 5k that you're entering, or if you're just doing a time trial somewhere, that you find a flat 3.1 miles my biggest suggestion is to try to negatively split your race.
Speaker 1:
So with 3.1 miles, that means starting five, maybe seven seconds per mile, or five, five seconds, five to seven seconds slower per mile than your goal average mile time and that seems slow. It might even feel like when you start that 5k the adrenaline everything's gonna make you want to have that First mile be fast out the gates. But in my experience the the most valuable thing you can do is to hold back and if you're racing with other people, that means staying in the caboose of a track or like try to be behind people and just like, let them do that hard work for you, especially early on and and so. And another thing to remember about that feeling is sometimes it doesn't feel easy, like you know. You're running five to seven seconds slower per mile.
Speaker 1:
Then you you want to be going because you're trying to negatively split and it feels like you're going all out. It can feel harder than it's supposed to if you're. You know when you're like wait, this isn't even my goal, 5k pace for this first mile, but it feels really, really hard. But that can change. And once you start to warm up and you realize that other people are settling into a more consistent Piece maybe they went a little fast that always happens at races Then you start to get a little bit of an adrenaline of wait. Okay, I'm starting to feel good and I noticed that that I've had that exact feeling In several races where I've started a little behind everybody.
Speaker 1:
And then the beauty of the race is just holding on for that middle mile, running that one at your goal, five came pace mile, and then off the last 1.1 mile negatively split, and the best part about that last mile is that you can use it as an opportunity to chip down and pass people, and every single person you pass because you were smart and started slow gives you a boost of adrenaline, and that's the best feeling when you know you still have more in the tank and you can pass people. That gives you so much more energy than you could have ever trained for. So strategy is a big tip like that. That is something that I can't emphasize enough of, like having the race day strategy for your 5k, but so I hope that this gives you a little bit of insight of how I think you can run a fast 5k.
Speaker 1:
This is coach Beatrix saying like I really do think that you can run a fast 5k and faster than you think you can If you just follow that like simple, simple guideline of getting the base mileage in there, incorporating the speed workouts they're simple and then on the day, knowing when to hold back and then when to kick. So I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you got any value from this 5k pep talk from me, and you can always find me on Instagram. I'd love to know your results for any 5k's that you happen to do this season. My name on Instagram I is at Lucy Beatrix L-U-C-I-E-B-E-A-T-R-I-X. And until next time, just be fast, just win.