5k, how many miles per week do you need?

[kevin marinkovich]

I have recently decided, after coming off of a long layoff from injury, to focus on speed.  So at this point my goal races are 5k distance. I am slowly building my mileage back up.  In order to get as fast as possible what would it take as far as weekly mileage?  And, what would a weekly long run distance be? I am willing to run as many miles per week as necessary to get as fast I am able go. Right now I am not doing any speed work, just ez runs with a few pickups. My thought is to build a good solid base, then work on speed.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Kevin

[Jon Allen]

Kevin, welcome back to running.  Have you ever read Once a Runner, the novel?  The main character is a miler, and runs 100-140 mile weeks.  So, to run your fastest 5k, just run that much!

I'm kidding.  Sort of.  Basically, your fastest 5k will come based on the highest mileage you can run without injury.  Speedwork will add a small portion to that, but the majority will depend on your consistent weekly mileage.  Build up slowly, esp. with your last injury.  If you can get up to 1 hr per day, 6 days a week, great.  If not that high, do what you can.  I wouldn't worry about speedwork until you are doing at least an hour a day.  That's my two cents.

[Steve P]

Just going to play devil's advocate a little here. Bernard Lagat is rumored to have run 40-50 miles a week when he was running some of the best 1500 meter races of all time. And he's not a fictional character.  On the other end of the spectrum, Bryon Powell, ultramarathoning blogger has run sub 20 hours a couple of times at the Western States 100 miler on 40-50 miles per week. So while I do agree that mileage is important, various strategies can be successful and lower mileage / higher intensity may work better for some people, especially those who are injury prone.

[Jake Krong]

Kevin - I think you can probably get a super wide range of responses to this question, and everyone will potentially be right. Like Steve said, guys like Lagat run low mileage / high intensity. Others do exactly the opposite. Its highly individualized. The 5K is 95% aerobic, so getting your mileage up to what you can handle w/out breaking down, and still getting in some quality workouts, is what you want to shoot for. What # is that exactly? That's what you have to find out.

My advice would be to start mixing in some "light" fartleks or short tempos as you are building your base. That way doing faster workouts won't come as a total shock to the body when you get to that point.

[Joe Furse]

I take a little of both sides for distances as short as a 5k.  People like Lagat and Powell are outliers.  Most people are not capable of performing at that level with that amount of training (also, I would like to know the duration of that 40-50 mpw cycle--pre race tapers don't count  )  That said, most high schoolers are probably capable of a 15:XX-16:XX on 50 mpw and a healthy dose of speed/conditioning if they are very consistent (which most aren't).  For someone perhaps a little older than an 18-year old, you'll probably need more mileage and less speed.  Personally, in high school I ran 15:39 on probably 50 miles per week with plenty of interval work (pyramids, 1000s, 800s, and 400s primarily) and a few fartlek type workouts, but more recently I've found I can run on the fast end of 16:XX with no trouble on 70 mpw and basically zero speed training.  I could probably match or better my HS times if I added in some interval work and actually ran a rested 5k once in awhile.  I would expect that my times would drop even more on my current training, but I haven't run a fresh 5k in probably over two years, so I can't say for sure.  So basically, I agree with a lot of what Jon said.  Don't worry too much about speed until you have a base mileage of at least an hour a day, but after that I think for a 5k that a good dose of "speed work" could be very beneficial, as long as you can keep the mileage up. 

[kevin marinkovich]

Thanks to all that have replied, I appreciate your time and advice.  Just  a quick question, I am assuming the 1 hour per day runs would be easy runs.  And as far as adding mileage slowly, I have heard so many ideas on that. Any Ideas on boosting up milage? Thanks again guys.

[Bill Cobler]

I agree with base training and find you are less likely to get injured doing more mileage than lots of speed sessions. I try to follow the 10% rule, with one little change. I find that you can either go up weekly about 10% per week or increase 1 mile per workout in the previous week (if you ran 10 times during the week you can jump a maximum of 10 miles the next week). I do break a few rules here and there based on overall base for a period of time, how long you where out, and what you did to cross train while not running. If your base miles were say 70- 80 for several months and then you were injured. Did not run for a month or two, you should not start back at that base mileage of 70-80 MPW, but I feel you don't need to start at 10-15 MPW either. Start with lower mileage and monitor what your body tells you. Within a month you may be able to get back to the mileage you were hitting depending on the type of injury that caused you to stop all together.
 But overall I like to increase athletes with this pattern. If you are at say 30 MPW, the next week I will jump to 40 MPW and the following week jump to 45 MPW. I then like to drop back the next week to 40, then 45, 50, 45, 50, 55, 60, 55, 60, 65. I like the pattern and it gives you a break form always trying to climb in miles with a drop back week. If you decide to go 75 or up I find a ten mile increase seems to be doable for a weekly increase, usually because you are doing more workouts weekly with doubles. Good luck and listen to what your body tells you.

[kevin marinkovich]

Thanks again for the advice. 
Kevin

[Jeff Linger]

Under 20 mpw you can increase by 10% every week, 30-40 mpw increase 10% every 2 weeks, over 40mpw increase 10% every 3rd week. In high school I ran a 15:45 off less than 35 mpw, but at least half of those miles were hill repeats and intervals on the track ... that being said, i also burned out after just 5 short years of running because i was going to hard too often with not enough recovery runs and easy runs

[kevin marinkovich]

Seeing as I am far out of high school, upping my miles sounds like the best plan.  Staying injury free is my first priority.    Increasing by 10% seems reasonable to me and looks like a good plan.