5 Tips for a Faster 5km

Have you been trying to improve your 5km time but struggling to get it down? Well, you’re not on your own. Lots of people have either done the couch to 5k or been grinding out the weeks with the goal of improving their Parkrun PB. Others simply want to get a little bit faster to help them achieve a PR in a half marathon or marathon, only to find themselves stagnating. There’s loads of reasons this can happen, and to be honest, plenty of ways to rectify it. But there’s only so much you can change at any one time, because too many alteration to the routine will lead to injury. So to make things easier, we’ve put together some of our top tips to make the necessary gains to get you back on the personal best train and improve your 5,000m time.

1. Weights

Most runners love to run, but they don’t necessarily like to get into the gym and throw some metal. But one of the key areas where most of us can improve is power. The more power you have, generally the better your running form, the more explosive you are, the faster you get and the more robust you become. To develop power you need to lift heavy, which requires good form. Squats and deadlifts are the foundation, and you’ll need some guidance early on to make sure you have good technique. Start with only the bar and progressively add weight across the weeks as your body adjusts, focusing on technique. Build towards doing 5 sets of 6 reps of deadlifts, squats and calf raises. Add some more lower body exercises as you get fitter and drop the number of sets of each movement back to 4.

2. Short Hills

In line with the above, short hills will help you become more powerful. They’re also great for developing lactic tolerance. If you’re asking what that is, well it’s that burning in the quads you get when trying to run fast for more than 10 seconds. Lactic acid is a byproduct of anaerobic exercise and it takes conditioning to get use to it, and also become more efficient so you produce less and get rid of it quicker. In terms of distance, 30 seconds of uphill is ample, with a walk down recovery. Run them fast enough you’re puffed by the top, but maintaining good technique. 10 reps is a great place to start, but get yourself to 16 and you’ll really be working hard.

3. Overspeed

If all of the training you do is slower than goal race pace, when it comes to hitting the tempo you need to crack that 5km PB, you will feel unsettled. It will be impossible to relax and you will likely be unable to relax at speed and not back yourself to maintain the rage. So it’s important to do some speed work that gets you moving well under race pace, and for a decent distance. Doing kilometer reps (3-5 of them) well under 5km goal time is a nice session, but I I’m also a big fan of doing a high volume of quite short efforts, for example 1 to 2 minute repeats, with 8 efforts at the shorter end and 6 at the longer. The recovery should be a similar duration to the effort.

4. Strides

Similar to the above, doing 6 to 8 by 100m strides or ‘run throughs’ after easy runs is a simple value add to the day that has significant gains. Apart from getting you to move at under goal race pace, it makes you do it in a state of fatigue. This is great for conditioning you to move with good form when your body is tired and a little loaded from the previous easy miles. I generally advise you build into the efforts, making the first couple fairly relaxed, practicing perfect form. Progressively get faster, not only within the reps, but as you do more of them.

5. Race Under then Over

This is one of my favourite things to get athletes to do, but it can be difficult to build into the schedule. If the race calendar allows, it’s really good for not only practice and fitness, but building confidence. The trick here is to find an event, ideally close to 10km and no more that a half marathon, a month or so before your 5km race. Treat the over distance event as a hard effort or tempo, not necessarily a race, and if possible run the final 2km at 5km goal time. Next find a race or do a time trial that’s 2km to 3km is distance, and hit this event faster than 5km race time. Do this a couple weeks out from the main event and you should feel a bit more confident and settled when the main goal event comes around.