6 Weeks Program to Smash Your 5K Personal Best

A common concern among runners who have an important race looming just a few weeks away is “What can I be doing right now to improve my fitness?”
Well, the answer to this question depends on your racing goals, target distance, and experience as a competitive runner, but there is still just one pivotal, universal truth across the spectrum- when you are close to a key race, your training should be as specific as possible to the demands of that event.
“Specific”, mind you, does not always mean “faster”. Quarter-mile repeats are not the best choice when peaking for a marathon, nor is a two-hour long run appropriate for a miler right before her goal race.
For the 5K, this specificity will typically entail workouts within a 10% range of goal pace, produce a high amount of lactate, and begin to simulate the intense demands of racing hard for a fairly short period of time. This doesn’t involve shortening all of your interval workouts, dropping mileage exponentially, and neglecting aerobic training as was the trend thirty years ago; that approach will often leave you feeling flat, sick, or injured due to beneficial hormone alteration late in a training cycle.
The goal is to always add elements of training to the mix, never to subtract them as we near a goal race. Prioritizing training stimuli at a certain time produces far more consistent results than periodizing those ingredients into neat little blocks of time. In real-world racing, you will be hard pressed to find an event where there are tidy sections for pure aerobic running, uphill surging, and all-out sprinting, so why train in such a manner where these crucial elements are isolated from one another?
Coach Peyton Hoyal
I recommend running at least 35-40mls per week prior to beginning this plan with a recent history of formal speed training and racing. Precede each workout below with 15-20min of easy running, light dynamic stretching, and a few minutes of drills/strides. Between hard sessions each week, simply perform easy to moderate aerobic running per your normal routine and volume requirements.
Train smart, take recovery seriously, and race fast!
Week 1 (100% of Peak Volume)
Week 2 (100% of Peak Volume)
Week 3 (90% of Peak Volume)
Week 4 (90% Peak Volume)
Week 5 (80% of Peak Volume)
Week 6 (60-70% of Peak Volume)
Key Session 1 (complete 3-4 days before your race)-
Race! Go Set a New PR!