Top-End Speed

I’ve posted a few times on this blog about how I’m looking to improve my 5k speed.

The goal is to get my 5k below 17:30. But apart from a downhill time trial in June, I haven’t come close yet.

I’m happy with how my running has progressed in general this year, and I feel I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since college.

But the speed thing has proved stubbornly difficult. Running 5:38 pace (what I need to run to go sub-17:30) doesn’t feel like 5k race pace right now; it feels like a sprint. It’s too close to my top-end speed for me to run that fast for a 5k.

If I were to do a workout today with six repeat 400s, my pace would be in the low 80s and that would be a hard workout. In college and in high school, when I was at my peak, that same workout would be in the low 60s. I remember one workout I did my senior year of high school where I ran 62, 61, 62, 61, 62, and then finished in 55.

Today, I think 82, 81, 82, 81, 82, with a 75 finish would be an all-out-effort or close to it (or maybe even a workout I couldn't do).

I’m a good 20 seconds per lap slower than my peak right now. I appreciate that we all slow with age, but that's a serious drop, not commensurate with what the data shows should be the physical decline associated with age.

20 seconds per lap equates to 80 seconds per mile, which equates to more than three minutes slower for a 5k.

These days, I’m actually about two minutes slower than I used to be for an altitude 5k, but it’s easy enough to see why when you look at my times on the track.

My endurance is fine; I’m just slow at the top end.

I’ve neglected top-end speed for the last 20 years. And it shows.

Last Friday, I did a “speed development” workout I learned about from Jay Johnson[1] years ago. It consists of 3 150-meter strides, followed by 3 all-out 30-meter sprints, followed by 4 120-meter near-all-out efforts.

All of this on full rest.

The 120-meter sprints are timed. My times? 21 low, followed by three repeats around 20.

That’s 68-second quarter pace or 4:32 per mile pace, for what basically amounts to a 100-meter dash. I'd very much struggle to stay with Kipchoge for a 400 right now.

I found this stunning. I knew I was slower than I used to be, but I figured I could run sub-60 pace for at least a hundred meters. 

My 400 PR was once 52 high. Now, I’m incapable of running 62-second quarter pace for any distance.

There are two ways of looking at this. One is that getting old is really sad. Another is that, if I can recover just some of the speed I once possessed, I might have some real room for improvement.

If I could improve to the point where I was only 10% slower than I used to be, rather than nearly 30% slower, that leaves room for 20% improvement over where I am right now. 

(Stated another way, if my max quarter were a 57 as opposed to a 72, that would be more than a 20% improvement)

That's what I’m going to try to do; I’m going to try to work my way over the track on a regular basis to work simple speed development until I can run a sub-60 second quarter again.

I’ll still keep running 40-60 miles a week so that I don’t lose endurance altogether, but I think I’m better served going to the track and to try to reacquire something resembling real foot speed than trying to do a lot of tempo runs or Vo2 max repeats, as I have been doing so far this year.

It seems obvious that lack of top-end speed is my limiting factor right now. So I'm going to take some time to work on that. 

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[1] Jay Johnson is the ultimate running ubernerd and a great source of information on running. He also used to whoop my butt in high school.