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Taking Time Off A PB
Guarddog
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I was at the gym yesterday evening and just as I was leaving a sign by the exit caught my eye. It had been put up by one of the personal trainers advertising their services. Amongst the normal claims for improved fitness, strength training, dietary advice, etc, was the claim to be able to provide training from 5K up to marathon distance. My interest piqued I read the sign and before long the PT must have seen me standing there and so came over and we had a bit of a chat.
The training is effectively done via an app, a training schedule is set-up and you then respond with your results. The programme was designed to run for a 16 week period. All seemed a bit too remote for my liking. As I left, though, I noticed that he had a testimonial on his sign from a runner who said that he'd taken a minute off of his 5K time through following the 16 week programme.
Initially I thought that was quite good. My best 5K time is currently 23:45 and to be able to get under 23 mins would be a huge step and I wished I'd seen that before so I could ask how that was achieved. Then I started to think more about it. Where was the individual's starting point? If they were like me, been running for a few years now, but were struggling to find those extra seconds, then that would be good.
However if they were someone who had started from, say, a C25K position and were just beginning to be able to complete a 5K by running all the way round, was 1 minute after 16 weeks that impressive? I've taken people out running who have just started and seen a bigger improvement than 1 minute over a 5K time in a shorter period.
The training is effectively done via an app, a training schedule is set-up and you then respond with your results. The programme was designed to run for a 16 week period. All seemed a bit too remote for my liking. As I left, though, I noticed that he had a testimonial on his sign from a runner who said that he'd taken a minute off of his 5K time through following the 16 week programme.
Initially I thought that was quite good. My best 5K time is currently 23:45 and to be able to get under 23 mins would be a huge step and I wished I'd seen that before so I could ask how that was achieved. Then I started to think more about it. Where was the individual's starting point? If they were like me, been running for a few years now, but were struggling to find those extra seconds, then that would be good.
However if they were someone who had started from, say, a C25K position and were just beginning to be able to complete a 5K by running all the way round, was 1 minute after 16 weeks that impressive? I've taken people out running who have just started and seen a bigger improvement than 1 minute over a 5K time in a shorter period.
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Comments
If it takes having a trainer to motivate you to be consistent and build your training load, then it would probably help but there's no reason you couldn't do it on your own if you have the motivation.
I seem to think as a claim, though, the 1 min improvement is a difficult one to really accept without knowing what the starting point was.
I don't know how old you are but if optimum age (20-40), and optimum BMI, and barring serious injuries like stress fractures, I could get your running time down to close to 20 minutes in the same amount of time. You could do it yourself with enough willpower and research. Every male of that age and average fitness is capable of running 20 minute 5kms with 16 weeks of proper training and diet.
Which was my thinking. I've recently trained someone down from 40 mins for 5K to 28 mins and that's been done over 8 weeks.
As for me I'm coming up to 55 and my race predictor is saying I could do a 20 min 5K. As you say it's willpower, proper training and diet.