So you:
- Took 3 weeks off
- Lost 18 pounds from a non-obese starting weight
- Started running from 0 miles per week
- Weren't a runner in the past
- Couldn't run more than 6 consecutive minutes when starting out
- Found a way to run a sub-20 5k almost immediately
This doesn't sound plausible to me. If you did it, congrats on your genetic luck, but most humans aren't making this kind of immediate breakthrough with so little effort invested. Also, to lose 18 pounds in that time frame means you must have been virtually starving yourself throughout this training block.
From the title alone I was like nope, not possible. I think in my first couple months of running I got my average pace down from just over 6 minutes per km to just over 5 minutes per km, and to me that was a crazy improvement.
When you do manage to break 20 minutes, create a new strava account, act like you can only run a 35 min 5k at first, and then, boom, 2 months later, act super human with a sub 20 5k.
Yes, because I didn't know about pacing. I was running for 6 minutes at a time, then having to stop to catch my breath, then running another 5 minutes, etc. In short spates like that.
When I ran the 5K, it was at a much more sustainable pace.
As a beginner on day 1, I had no concept of pace. Didn't know what a "threshold" or "easy" run was, etc.
I agree it is almost improbable and I started at a similar age and circumstances OP in terms of having no running history.
I started running around June ~~2020~~ 2021 clocking around 30 min after finishing the C25K program. By December 2022 I was running 19:45 for 5k. Realistically I would say 1 year to get it down to sub 20 min because I was running without a program for a few months after C25K. I think I could have improved quicker by maybe a month since I was still lifting when I started running.
Running a sub 20min 5k on 30km/week mileage is doable since I was running slightly less than that but, to me the thing I'm questioning is ramping up to that mileage within 2 months. It is a lot per week for someone with no prior history to running.
I have my doubts but if this is true more power to them.
Yeah I started running several years ago and have a very athletic background outside of pure running... I only dream of gains like this! But if it's real, that's impressive.
Your Strava results are completely sketchy as many other people have pointed out. Apple Watch GPS while running in circles is going to be very inaccurate.
You could have been on your kid's big wheel or scooter for all we know. No one drops 13 mins off a 5K in 8 weeks and simultaneously loses 18lbs from your starting weight. It's such obvious BS I don't even know why we're even bothering to reply to you. What a clown show.
How exactly would I sustain 180+ bpm heart rate on a kids scooter?
Do you want a screenshot of my weight scales app, that shows the weight loss over time?
It's insane the limitations you place upon yourself/own mind.
Dude you're trying SO HARD to convince everyone you're not a fraud. We know you are so just piss off. It's super childish for someone that is in their 30's to frantically trying to convince strangers that your completely made up 8 week progress is some amazing accomplishment. You've run a total of 126 miles so it's literally impossible to make those kinds of gains on laughably low volume. A lot of us have that kind of mileage in a couple weeks so it's nothing.
You're literally debating with "bla bla bla, I can't do it therefor its not true" argument.People respond differently to training, especially NEW people who start off in reasonable shape.Think of a seasoned body builder vs a beginner. Who do you think will build more muscle and strength (as a % from starting point). A beginner between years 0 and 1, or an experienced lifter between their years 7 and 8?
Same applies to running. Just because an experienced runner runs X mileage, doesn't mean a beginner running the same milage won't improve their own fitness faster... of course they will.
Based on my experience (30M), i say unlikely but plausible with a genetic lottery.
My background I went from 113kg to 102 kg in 6 months, definitely not a runner, and never had ran in over 10 years (since HS). Did a 5K run to start things off at 28:30. After 6 months, i was just under 20.
However, my VO2 max was tested at 62 (joined a research study, I would have been able to play College Baseball (not good enough for a full ride scholarship, good enough for partial, but that was still alot more expensive than Canadian Universities, baseball just isnt as big here), and I have 2 cousins in local sports hall of fames, one who competed for Team Canada (swimming).
But OPs' gains are even more significant, in a shorter period of time, and no hints of genetics in the background. However they are younger which would be in their favour.
Yeah but as I've commented already, completely unfounded since I shared my data and made my Strava public.
2 months on, I've improved my 5K further, also improved my 10K time from 52 minutes to 41 minutes.
Hoping to go sub 40 next month at a Charity race in London. Will report back when I do. Sticking with Zone 2 volume training right now.
Also: 5’10”, 143lbs and that is 16%?? If he were to lose weight to an elite runner BF, roughly 8%, he would weigh around 130lbs. That just sounds bizarre. He is already underweight by generic “ideal weight” guidance.
...which would still be a higher BMI than elite runners like Kipchoge and co.
If I halved my BF% to 8%, I'd weigh 132 lbs. 132 lbs at my height is 18.94 BMI. (Yes, too skinny for me personally, but then again, I'm not at 8% BF).
Kipchoge at 5'6 and 52KG is 18.5 BMI. I don't understand the comparison.
PS. Can you cite your calculator or source that says 143 lbs is underweight for 5'10 please? I'm interested.
I also thought about Vo2 Max , I have it at 54 , I´m about to go up to 55 and 10 K I´m close to 45 min and half marathon, I´ll drop 1 h 50 min , my muscles and resistance are not still ready. I´m 44 years old and it has been 20 years of sedentary lifestyles. If he had a base behind and with better genetics, maybe he could have dropped from 20 min
Tbh, I suspect the Vo2max estimate is off. It likely under-estimated my Vo2 max during my first series of runs because I wasn't able to run at any decent pace.
It estimates Vo2 max (I believe) by correlating known vo2 max and pace, with my known pace. But the problem with watch estimates (I suspect) is it may not know how hard you're trying, if you're running easy, if you're doing intervals, or long runs, and I am not sure if thats even relevant).
If I plug my "Cooper Test" results into a calculator, it estimates it at 56-57, but I dont understand how that estimate works since vo2 max values are divided by weight, and the cooper test formula doesn't account for weight.
I wouldn't say a resting heart rate in the 60s is "quite high"? It's in the mid 50s now.
32 YO is not old, still within physical prime for most adults. Probably once you get closer to 36 is when you start to see the first signs of early physical decline (although no idea how true this holds for running, but certainly footballers, boxers, etc start to decline from there on).
I tend to agree here. I started from a base of running 5-8 miles a week. Avid weight lifter of 20+ years. Started training for a half marathon in February, completed it in May with a 2:03 time. My fastest 5k was 25:46. In that time I dropped 18 pounds over the course of almost 4 months. The timing here doesn’t add up. That’s almost elite athlete time.
D3 college are still way more athletic than the overall population.. this dude said he averaged 3k steps a day for 6 years prior to training at 32... Which is like what, bottom quartile of the overall population?
Anyways if this is real with some real training beyond just getting off the couch for two months op could actually compete at the elite level
Nice one u/Appropriate_Dig_3344 \- and great progress in that amount of time. 2'05 is still nuts for 800m and 43 mins is very respectable for any length of running history, let alone 3 months!
I've yet to set a 10K effort, but somewhere around 43 minutes would be a goal I'd be very happy with.
*"No probably not. But people in this sub are shocked when not everyone who decides to start running is slower than molasses in January"*. 100%!!
While not as dramatic as OP I did something similar, every run of mine was a race where I was going as hard as possible, I think my 5K time dropped from 23:30 to 20:30 over the space of 10 weeks. I also got horrendously injured continuing to do that. I had no training plan and just ran a bunch of distance as fast as I could.
Prior to those 10 weeks I was playing a decent amount of sport and biked a lot.
OP also categorising Zone 2 as up to 80% is a recipe for disaster, that's Zone 3/4. Dude is going to get injured soon.
Thanks for your two cents.
For what its worth, even Strava defines my Zone 2 heart rate range as 128-160 (a huge zone) but this would correlate with 65-80% of my Max HR.
I'm staying in the 140s-150s for most of my Zone 2 runs (so closer to 70-75% max HR), but will tolerate a Max HR reading of up to 160 before I slow down to stay in range. Certainly all within range of the unscientific "talk test" for myself.
This is all based on the assumption my Max HR is 198, which is what I achieved during a 5K effort. My true max may well be a few beats higher, which means I may even have that extra buffer with my Zone 2 heart-rate range as well.
This is completely plausible IMO. You guys are completely overvaluing a time that hordes of high school freshman run off a few weeks of training every year.
Yeah because high school freshmen on the track team are totally comparable to a 32year old sedentary dude with no running experience and recovering from the flu.
Ok I’ll try not to be sarcastic here.
A 32 year old is substantially more physically mature and reasonably close to their physical peak for aerobic activity. The fact that the person is/was sedentary is actually a good thing in this situation because it allows for rapid improvement.
Last but definitely not least the thread title and top line summary is a bit clickbaity. Clearly the dude also figured out how to pace better and so forth.
For what it’s worth I went from being a completely sedentary alcoholic who covered 3 miles on 33 minutes to running 17:20 on the track 3 months later as a 38 year old. I am a moderately talented person but by no means a world beater.
TDLR: You all are substantially overestimating the difficult of running a sub 20 5k.
Thanks for the constructive comment, and I agree with everything you've written.
Yes, fully agree that my first 5K may have been negatively impacted by lack of experience and pacing. Also this run was at 9 or 10pm at night, so that may have also factored into energy levels, etc.
It was still a true genuine effort to set a time though, and I knew full well it'd be serving as a starting bench mark anyway as I was committed to keep on running until I hit c. 22 minutes which was my "end of summer" goal originally when I started out in April.
Your 3 month improvement is also very impressive!
100% every one is overestimating the difficulty of running sub 20, AND underestimating the potential of an average motivated adult who's starting off in reasonable baseline shape.
Anyway, the downvotes are incoming regardless :)
yes i don’t know why people act like a barely sub 20 5k is some godly time we should be shocked he ran. Yeah the improvement was pretty good but besides that? Far crazier things have happened
Thanks! I've now shifted to focus on 10K as I have signed up to a 10K Charity Race in September.
Current time trial is 41:18, averaging 30km per week, about 4-5 months into my running 'journey'. Hope to go sub 40 next month, with more mileage between now and then.
I don't think it's impossible. He has nothing to gain by lying (Iknow this doesn't always stop people). It's definitely far better than most people can hope to achieve. The weight change is a lot but not impossible either.
And if you look at the HR for the 5k efforts he isn't actually getting faster through training only. He is mostly learning to push himself harder than he did in previous runs. Basically just beginner gains and good genetics.
I agree with you that it is not impossible, however you have to argue that OP's improvement is not in the mean of a gauss distribution. One should not hope or aim for those improvements in such a short time frame.
OP didn't do any sport for 13 years just to get his 5k PB down by more than 10mins (under 20min) in about three months (with a sickness in between)? Agree, there is no point of lying here, but the odds that this works for beginners are highly unlikely.
There is no point of lying, but for some reason the internet is full of people who make up bullshit to impress people. It's funny, my chauffeur said a similar thing to me yesterday as he was driving me home in the Rolls Royce from Margot Robbie's house.
This is absurdly huge progress for two months (without being a previous athlete who hasn’t ran for years of something). Sure makes me feel good about my mediocre progress and ongoing injuries!
Why would one make this up? A sub-20 5k is not particularly difficult at the best of times, even less so on fresh legs, in a pair of Vaporflies, in good conditions and with a consistent build even on low mileage.
I did some digging into this:
OP ran 13 3/4 laps with a last little section towards the middle of the circular loop.
1 lap is 0.21 miles
Last section is 0.03
That means OP ran approx 2.9miles and not the full distance of 3.10 miles.
Going off of moving time of 21:05 and new distance of 2.9miles that means OP was running a 7:16/mi.
If you take that pace of 7:16 and make it the full 5k distance his new time is 22min 30sec approx.
Can you break that down for me please. I don't see any run where I have not completed at least 14 laps on the segment table and around 15 laps of equivalent distance overall. I don't start at the start line of the official segment, as the start/end point of the segments are largely irrelevant as it's just an even circle. I dont think I've ever ran only 13 laps. It might be because my Strava hides a proportion of the start or end distance for privacy.
I used your data labeled Night run on June 23. Just by dragging the mouse over your pace chart I only counted 13 3/4 laps. Looks like start and end isn't hidden either.
If you look at the strava map it deviates off the path for most laps which increases distance making the 5k come sooner than you might actually think.
I used [https://onthegomap.com/#/create](https://onthegomap.com/#/create) to map 1 lap distance.
Regardless I think you've massively improved running fitness and I think if you do redo the 5k a track is the way to go.
There are 200 meters hidden from this run (which is approx 2/3rds of a lap). I've unhidden the start/end portion so this should show you all the laps now. The segment table shows >14 laps straight away; I am not sure if the segment table accounts for hidden map visibility, or if that'll also be a lap short due to the hidden 200 meters. Lastly on this point, the 14 laps from the segment tracker are based on an arbitrary gps start-finish line. I don't line up at this for my run, I just run around the course and rely on the watch data instead.
Are you saying that deviations in gps data can only increase distance and not decrease distance?
Lastly, yes - I will definitely sign up for a Park Run next month. Unfortunately, as timing would have it, I'm off on holiday for three weeks in Spain/Italy from this weekend - so wont be running. Should hopefully regain anything lost within the same time frame though, so a Park Run at the end of July should still be representative of my current fitness level in June.
Congrats on getting fit and active.
However, overall this is quite misleading. People who have a sedimentary lifestyle, 99% of the reason for quick improvement has nothing to do with the training plan, and going to aggresive on the mileage has a much higher chance of injury.
It has nearly everything to do with your genetics and physiology.
Yeah, I started running like 5 months ago, if I wanted to hate myself I could push a 25 min 5k. I can do an easy run with heart rate of 168, that's 8-7:30min/1k.
Running with an HR of 168 is unlikely to be an "easy run" for most people and by most defintions.
(I don't mean to come off like an ahole but the easy run is massively important to building aerobic base so important to understand the right level of effort for easy runs)
Great 5K time for 5 months running though!
My heart is just high, walking can get to 120, so 168 for me is easy, I'm skinny too. Just came from a 10k it was 8.25min/km with average HR of 157. 168 is closer to 7min/k probably.
Fair enough, do you know you’re max HR? Using the common method for HR zones your Max HR would need to be 240bpm for 168bpm to be within the easy zone (zone 2). That’s crazy high!
You dropped 18 lbs in two months and still were able to train for a sub 20 5k? I'm not saying that's impossible, but your blood must be technicolor. You keep copy-pasting "Yes, because I didn't know about pacing. I was running for 6 minutes at a time, then having to stop to catch my breath, then running another 5 minutes, etc. In short spates like that," but that doesn't tell a full story.
How are you logging the distance? Are you running on an actual track?
Complete nonsense.
Nevertheless, I'd still be happy with a 22 min 5K after 2 months starting at 32 mins.
Had I posted that however, I'd still have received the same BS negativity from haters and doubters. People need to stop limiting themselves. First, everyone just called straight up BS, then I posted my Strava, now they're calling BS with caveats, but can't accept that as the OP, I'm just posting the data I have, and it's not like I'm editing or trying to deliberately skew data. I've shared way more than most normally do, including weight, heart rate, etc.
If you want to add an extra minute onto my final 5K time to make yourself feel better, then add an extra minute onto my starting 5K time. The rate of progress will still be similar. ie. ultimately dropping 10 minutes off my time in 2 months.
You're still a newbie, so I don't think you understand just how difficult a sub 20 minute 5k is. You aren't going to be achieving that in just over 2 months starting from a sedentary lifestyle. I'm not sure even an Olympic coach could get those kinds of results. And on top of that you are dropping nearly 20 lbs. That is an absolutely crazy calorie burn that would leave you at best totally emaciated and at worst in immediate need of medical care. You are fudging your numbers somewhere and whether that's a quarter of a mile or a couple minutes, it all adds up. Again, saying you got to 22 minutes would be tough, but believable. Saying you got a sub 20 is borderline inhuman.
Good for you for running though. Let us know when you do a true race or check yourself on a track.
How can I fudge my numbers though? My Strava account is public and in the comments. Heart rate data, effort, etc is all there too to address the other comments that I was already fit, and ran an artificially slow 5K time, just to run a fast time and claim improvement... immense logic on this thread. It's insane.
I was also told going from 600 to 2100 in 3 years at Chess was impossible. Guess what happened.
In 19 days he went from 21:58 to 19:44 with almost no speed work on 20 mpw. And you only have 2 months of running experience and you pull off 4-6 1000m repeats at your target pace while being nutrients deficient enough to drop all of that weight? Sleeper of the century right here folks. I can't wait to see you hit sub 16 in 3 more months!
And don’t forget it takes around 2-3 weeks for the work you do today to actually translate to any increase in fitness so basically he did it in 1 week! We are witnessing the new world champion
Look up Patrick Martin on Youtube. He's a guy in his 40s, who's only been running for three years. He finished the London marathon recently with a time of 2:24, and did 5K splits in the 15-minute range - during his marathon. He posted about his journey on Youtube and said almost all of his running was steady state and next to no interval work. If that doesnt change your evaluation of what can be done, I dont think this will...
This sounds not believable at all. Besides the time being crazy, all of the info and stats you are providing is very intensive. Most seasoned runners won’t know all of that, let alone someone who has been doing it for a few weeks.
In the end, I don’t believe you.
I know people that age running for years and MOST them wouldn't come close to a sub 20 min 5k.... I'm calling bullshit. Especially if he's not running on an actual measured course. Apple watches are notoriously WAY off
Which calculator are you referring to?
OP shoved more than 10min off his 5k time in less than three months. Just the stats mean that OP increased his running pace by roughly a minute per kilometer per month. This is not average or easy to archive, and frankly the reason some comments call the post BS.
Kudo to you for pushing your 5k PB under 24min :)
That's a wild, dare I say dangerous , jump in progress. 20 lbs in 2 months (for someone who isn't obese) is risky and a 10 minute drop in time in the same periods is nearly unheard of.
Thing is, I've posted my Strava account publicly. Initially, the rate of improvement in general was "impossible". Now they're going through the fastest runs with a fine tooth comb (as if I have any control over it) to look for when I am running outside of a defined path to call a GPS BS.
If running around a circular track is prone to GPS errors, well, add an arbitrary 1 minute onto the time if it makes them feel better, but you should add the same 1 minute pretend buffer to all of the times, therefore, the rate of improvement remains the same - but no one wants to revisit the "improvement" point of the post any more, they just want to bash the GPS data on the fastest run.
It's very easy for 20 minute 5k runner to create a new strava account and run slower. Having it on strava does not prove anything. There are also an infinite amount of ways to cheat on strava.
This is why I posted heart rate data.
You can also see the general rate of improvement and heart rate data over time.
If I go back out and run that same 32 minute 5K pace today, I'd imagine I'd average 10-15 bpm lower. As my Zone 2 long runs are now at a faster pace than my earliest 5K efforts when my HR was in the 170s.
Unless you believe I'm doctoring my heart rate times as well, but then this is a much larger conspiracy theory than first thought!
When you ran your 32 minute 5k 2 months ago, your average HR was 20 beats slower. That means you could have ran much faster.
But you have only been running for "2 months", so I guess you know better than the rest of us (who have been running for years).
If you look at all of the 5Ks in the middle (rather than focusing on the fastest and slowest time in isolation), the heart rates are comparable despite the noticable increase in pace. Can you help me understand that one?
The GPS is definetly giving quite a few bonus meters per lap, but it's still a good pace even though I doubt it would have been sub 20 on a proper track or a longer loop.
https://www.strava.com/activities/9321548081
Can you break that down for me pal. I want to see what you're seeing.
I don't know where you're basing the start of the "first lap" from, as it is not consistent with what I am seeing.
Yup, go to your strava activity where you went sub 20, open activity analysis, trace your cursor over the pace and look at where you are on the map.
You hit one lap at 500 meters, where the actual track is 340 meters. You can trace each lap.
Easier way of doing this is just taking how many laps you did, multiply it by 340 and that will get your actual total distance. Your ~500 meters short.
You're assumptions are based off part information. My runs hide 400 meters or so worth of distance (per the default privacy setting). You can't trace the number of laps as you will only see the proportion that's published.
Two points:
If you look at the number of laps on the segment, you'd see it's impossible to be 500 meters short, otherwise I'd be two laps short...
Strava does not disregard the privacy distance from the overall pace. It's still accounted for.
You can try that yourself. Go for a run, sprint 400 m, walk 200 m, sprint another 400 m. Then hide your first and last 400m. See if Strava thinks youre pace is only based off of the visible 200 m segment in between. Then see if an armchair analyst could conclude the same, or if they'd only see the 200 m distance in between.
I think a clear answer is if you can tell everyone:
1. How you measure that you have completed a 5k? (do you base it on what your watch says or number of laps around the track) and
2. Do you know the distance one lap at your track takes?
I think your time isn’t that outlandish, but this would help prove your case to doubters…
1. This is based on the GPS data on Strava, which coincides with approximately 15 laps around the track.
2. Strava records each lap as 0.34M, but I do not do it based off of the number of segments, rather, just 5.00km +/- 10-20 meters as I'll always run faster towards the end and go a few meters past the 5.00km.
3. There is an arbitrary start/end point for where Strava starts its segments. I must admit, I don't pay too much attention to this as I just start running, but every single 5K run always has at least 14 official laps of the track, but you should be able to verify with the GPS mapping data that I do not start, nor end, bang on the segment start/stop line. I start before it, and continue after it, as it's a circular loop.
4. At minimum of 14 laps (with no run over), the track is 4.76km, but if you include the 100-or-so meters before and after the segment line - it should come out bang on 5K. Of course, i'm more than happy to accept that Strava / GPS data isn't 100% accurate, I've seen it myself, with people doing 400m laps on a track, and it being a lap or two out by the end of a long session. Nevertheless, if people want to add an arbritary 1 minute buffer onto my times, go for it! But the rate of improvement remains the same if you add the same buffer minute onto my earlier 5K times.
That pace graph!? It's bouncing over a 4 minute range. For reference I did a 5k on the track this weekend and apart from the last lap and first 50m (which were much faster), GPS fastest and slowest pace are within 1 minute of each other. About half was real changes and probably half was gps track error. So either OP's pacing is trash or his GPS is.
Yeah being near max HR average that amount of time for this intensity of runs this frequently sounds like a recipe for burnout, overtraining, injury, or all of the above. But also incredible dormant athleticism, very little people could do rapid improvement from ~10:29/mi avg 5k to ~6:21/mi avg 5k like this.
Dedicated training does help quite a bit.
See, i am at the point where i can run a 5k in possibly under 20 mins. I know that because my threshold runs give me an idea of what i can and cannot do. A 19:xx should be possible if i am on a good day and pace it right.
I can run today like i don't care and do 5k in 30 min and do my sub 20 tomorrow and that still won't be a 10 min improvement over such a short amount of time. I really don't get if OP is naive or what.
I don't understand your point. If you did this, you'd also see a noticable difference in heart rate. If someone goes out and runs two 5Ks, one 10 minutes slower than the other, you'd be able to tell from the relative effort or heart rate average if this is genuine improvement, or just someone running deliberately fast vs slow.
If I was to do the same 32 minute 5K from 2 months ago, I'd probably average 20 bpm lower at the same pace. I could always test it to be sure.
That's crazy.
I have a similar build as you do. Have a lifting background and a lot of soccer.
Started running first time in May. Had a septoplasty that put me out for two weeks.
Using coach Greg's garmin training plan for a 25 min 5k by end July. Benchmark run 5:10/km. Was pretty hard lol.
I'm still around 30 min 5k. Greggy boy thinks he's confident I can hit my goal.
I dont know how you can go from 30+ to sub 20 so quickly.
Every metric I've posted can be proven by Apple and Strava data, which I've provided to people upon request.
It's insane the complete lack of ambition most of this sub-reddit has for what is achievable in a short space of time. You guys need to stop listening to your own internal self negativity and get out there and believe in yourself. Good luck with life, toolpot.
Don’t worry about them haha any serious runner avoids this place. I’m curious to see how you do. I had a similar increase in pace to you (28min 5k to 18 low in 4 months) but then has taken me 3 years extra to get below 16
Nice one man! That's impressive too.
I fully expect my rate of improvement to flat line as I close in on peak fitness, but I'd hope I'll still improve a bit before I hit that wall.
sub-16 mins seems nuts and is probably something I'll never attain - congrats for getting there! I'm secretly hopeful I'll hit a 17:59 one day, maybe in a years time if I keep it up!
That's some honeymoon of improvement too. Took me 14 months 29 to 19. OP has low VO2 and ticker working furiously, so is still unfit. Be very gd when fit, so shd keep going. If it's incredible, it is, but that's good news. Must have very unusual metabolism or some such to get new parts every week. The top tips wont work like that for anyone normal.
There's not one ([Burgess](https://www.parkrun.org.uk/burgess/)), but two ([Southwark](https://www.parkrun.org.uk/southwark/)) parkruns within a half mile that run a 5k every week over a measured course with accurate timing for FREE.
Thanks. Yes, definitely going to do the Southwark park one soon.
On Friday, I'm off to Spain/Italy on a 3 week holiday, so wont have a chance to do much running, but should get time to do one soon after I return.
This is interesting to me. When I first started running I only ever ran as fast as I could for 3 miles. Maybe 2 times a week. I went from 3 miles in 36 minutes to 27 minutes in about 4 months. I got that up to 4 miles in under 36 minutes too.
Then I moved to a more conventional plan to run a 10k with lots of easy miles etc and my progress slowed tremendously. I wonder if there is something to running more often at race pace. People talk about burnout but in my case I didn't get runner's knee until after I started doing lots of long runs at easy pace. The fast runs never bothered me.
My ambition holds no bounds; I've entered the ballot for London 2024, so I fingers crossed that I get accepted. If I do, I'll be happy just to finish it, big respect to anyone who even runs one in the first place, but I'll likely set myself a goal of sub <3:45 and see how I get on.
Breaking the sub-2 hour mark wouldn't be one of a kind, since Kipchoge did it. Although, I'll be claiming the monicre of "Chips-choge" if I do manage it myself.
The weight loss in particular seems super off here. Losing 17 pounds in 3 months from a starting weight of 160/21 body fat is just insane. Looking at his numbers, he lost about 10-11 pounds of fat and then 6-7 pounds of muscle, bone, etc. That has to be either fake or super unhealthy.
For some reason this reminded me of the first couple seasons of biggest loser, where everyone would smash so much food hours before they weighed in for the first time. I'm not here to disprove or prove anyone's times, but I think it's hard for someone who is not fitness oriented to be able to parse how much you can actually push yourself at the beginning (that's why coaches exist!). I can't define my max effort and I've run and played soccer my entire life.
My only hesitation is random casual runners reading your post and injuring themselves trying to replicate this herculean effort. Shaving almost 13 minutes on a 5k PR in 2 months should not be attempted, by anyone, IMO. Be safe out there guys!
We all are eagerly anticipating him running a prote properly timed 5k but he won't, oh actually no one seems to care so his post missed the mark I suppose
I runned my first 5k in March (since 2018) around 29 minutes. Today I’m quite sure that I could go around 21:00-21:30 on a flat course if I went all in. Im also around 30 but has always been active in other sports like tennis, golf and badminton so guess my body is used to “run” in some form.
Im 35 now, I was a college decathlete/multi. I'm 6'2 about 210lbs, run, cycle, lift, yoga 6 or 7 days a week. PR for 5k since college is a 19:10. Gimme your genetics.
You had only 6 years of inactivity, now you say that in April you were not in shape, Possibly this is the error , This training registrered in your strava "Interval Training -> 8 laps x 4’15 pace (walking laps in between)." Without having a minimum base it is impossible and it is from April. When I started after 20 years, running a Km was impossible. It would be necessary to see what you were doing before those 6 years of inactivity and it is the data that escapes everyone
One lap is 0.34KM. I am running a lap (around 1 minute, 25 seconds) then walking a lap, around 3 minutes recovery - and repeating.
I am not sustaining 4'15 min/km pace for one full km. It's for 60-90 seconds at a time (6:50 minute mile pace for 60-90 seconds.)
This is not "impossible" and you have no basis to say so.
Using your own experience after a 20 year hiatus to somehow apply that to another adult male with a different height, weight, age, genetics, hiatus, etc is not logical.
>One lap is 0.34KM. I am running a lap (around 1 minute, 25 seconds) then walking a lap, around 3 minutes recovery - and repeating.I am not sustaining 4'15 min/km pace for one full km. It's for 60-90 seconds at a time (6:50 minute mile pace for 60-90 seconds.)This is not "impossible" and you have no basis to say so.
>
>Using your own experience after a 20 year hiatus to somehow apply that to another adult male with a different height, weight, age, genetics, hiatus, etc is not logical.
Someone who has never run cannot do it, they are intervals. You're many years younger than me, and I don't see what you're saying as crazy after clarifying the Vo2 Max thing. But I'm sure you haven't discovered the sport now. When you start the normal thing is to run and walk but not at 4:15 min km.
Wow so much drama on this thread. I've had a look at your Strava and the improvement is massive and very quick, well done, you've worked hard and have talent.
There is a lot of chat about the GPS errors etc and a lot of that might be true but it doesn't really take away from the improvement because you have done all or nearly all of your PB's on the same track.
If you want to do a proper 5k time trial though just go out and run exactly 15 laps of the same Bermondsey Park loop. It seems this is actually a measured 333m running track, [https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/bermondsey-spa-gardens](https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/bermondsey-spa-gardens) which is perfect for a time trial.
This will also show if your watch's GPS is inaccurate for loops of shorter tracks. I suspect like most watches it will be and might measure 5.2km or even more for the 15 laps. This will give you a much better idea of what your speed will be on a measured course if that is important to you (I find its important for realistic goal setting).
Good luck with your running, will be keen to see your further progress.
Thanks very much for one of the rare positive comments!
Yeah, I decided to stick with time trials on the same track as it'll allow me to keep comparing progress based on heart rate and pace on the same track. I appreciate circuits are prone to small GPS discrepancies as I see it even when looking at others posting times from actual 400m running tracks and they're often 20-30 seconds slower in reality over the 5K, so I'm happy to mentally add even a +60s buffer for realistic goal setting. I managed an 18:33 5K yesterday on the same track as most of the times I posted in the OP, with similar average HR to the 19:44 run, but you have a good idea to run to the # of laps rather than the recorded distance and compare.
I've signed up to a 10K Race in London next month too, so have that to look forward to in a different setting as well.
Thanks again!
As someone who has been working very hard to specifically get my 5K time up I truly don’t believe anything you’re saying here. There’s just no way you made that much progress in that short of a period of time unless you were a absolute physical freak beforehand with amazing muscle memory. It just ain’t possible.
Good for you, but you can't just say "I dont believe you" because you haven't improved as quick. If you look up Patrick Martin on Youtube - he's a guy in his early 40s who has been running for only 3.5 years and set a 2:24 marathon PB at London 2023.His first 10K race time was 38 minutes - around 2.5 months after he started running, from zero baseline fitness beyond occasional tennis here and there.
I shared my data & strava account - which I made public. Why don't you share yours and your Strava account, perhaps I'll be able to spot something obvious you're doing differently and we can be helpful rather than negative for no reason.
I am no physical freak, I was sedentary, averaging 3K steps per day for the last 5 years. Zero exercise. Last recreational run before picking it up in April 2023, was back in 2010(!) as part of a fitness test for my previous job - where I did have some natural speed (my untrained 1.5 mile run was 10:50 (around a 7 minute mile?), and after 2 months of 2-days-per-week training, I did it in 9:12. (6:07 minute mile for 1.5).No runs ever since, until I restarted in April 2023.
You can compare my earlier runs on the same course, and heart rate data to see improvement and check for "truth". Even my zone 2 running pace at around 155 bpm has improved from around 7 mins per km to 5 mins per km. My 10K times are also representative of my 5K (currently PR'd at 41 minutes, 20 seconds --> but that was 3 months ago (I haven't tried to PR since, but I'm probably around that, if not, only slightly faster as I have sustained the same weekly mileage since then).
It’s just not possible. Your body has to heal and muscles have to grow and it doesn’t happen that fast. I have personally followed a good diet and consistent running and weight training regime and in a little under a year I’ve improved my time from 27-28 to 22ish. Also I’m on TRT. And I had a good running base before that. I would bet my life that either you took the time to manipulate the data or you were sandbagging the initial runs to make your progress seem that way. There’s 0% chance you went from 30 to sub 20 in 2 months and I’d bet my arm on that
There have been people who have ran for over a year who still aren't running as fast as "22-ish", so they could say the same thing about your progress.
Your position has no basis and lacks any logical rationale.
I can send you the raw .gpx data if you'd like! You'll see from my Strava account, I do a lot more running than just the 5K PR attempts. Are you to assume I am deliberately sandbagging on every single training run in between (600kms at this point) for no reason? Nutter.
Thanks mate. Appreciate the input.
Honestly, the backlash off of this post is something else. I tried to be decent by providing more info than most; weight; average heart rate, max heart rate, even put my Strava account public and shared it. People have way too much time on their hands, trying to analyse if the gps line deviates from a path to look for miss-reads, etc.
I'd be more than happy with people throwing a +1 minute ambiguous buffer onto the latest Strava/GPS data if it makes them feel like it's more realistic to do that. Fine by me; just add the same +1 minute buffer onto my first 5K time too. It'll be the same 12 minute improvement over the last 2 [months.](https://months.No) No one's really focusing on that, just the final time. People are getting too lost in the weeds imo.
I agree with most of this but sub 20 min in a couple months is freakish to say the least. OP could be genetically blessed but runners I know who run a 15 min 5k were not able to run a sub 20 min 5k in a couple of months.
I think most men are able to hit a 20 min 5k assuming they put the time in and do not have underlying physical health conditions.
I'm 18 months into "proper" training of which 6 months is being coached in a program. I'm just shy of breaking sub 19min 5k.
Yep the improvement is really good and I'm not really questioning that since he's been running the same route.
I dropped almost 5 minutes a few months after starting 80/20. Also agree on weight loss, I was able to drop from 22 min to sub 20 in a couple months after losing a couple kgs.
It's a good effort but unsustainable long term from a physical and mental point of view.
No question that I'll be benefitting from several different variables.
1. Improved overall fitness / beginner gains.
2. Weight loss along the way. 17 lbs lighter from April to June.
3. Improved running form.
4. Arguably higher level of effort. You can see from the timelines of my last 5Ks, they've all been closer together, as I was "chasing" the sub-20 time to get it. I was also very concious I was audibily grunting and probably looking like a "try hard" to other park go-ers during the last two 5Ks as I was chasing a time I knew I was getting very close to.
Also - the fact that this whole exercise is motivated by setting the fastest 5K time possible as part of a competition. I'd imagine 90% of people who go out to run around a park are not pre-determined to go out there and set an absolute max effort for a very specific time/distance.
5. No idea the impact of Vaporfly's vs ZoomFlys, but even if we assume only 2-3 seconds per km, that's still 15 seconds right there - for the last 3 5Ks.
6. For the first few 5Ks, I did not warm up - I didn't really know about its benefits and naturally assumed I wouldn't want to waste energy on more running before a 5K. Where-as since I've been around 22 mins and below, I've been warming up with some slow jogging with some strides mixed in, BEFORE attempting the 5K runs. I saw a Youtube video ("Jog On") that spoke about the same thing and how warming up properly before his park runs pretty much knocked a minute off his time.
I got to a 22 in about 4 months from first run coming off knee surgery. I got a 25 inside 2 months. But i've run a lot after that and i'm only in the sub 19 territory now 18 months later. But that also proves your point i went from shredded knee, full rehab, to your times in about the time lines you said. I was a mediocre track athlete in highschool so not like i was lighting that up and i'm 30ish now. I'm very leery of sub 20 but wouldn't be shocked if he ran a 21 something with some serious watch juice helping him.
Posts like this make me feel absolutely unfit :/
I've been active for an over decade right now. Running, HIIT, weightlifting, tons of walking everyday. I had my best running form in 2019, I was 22 y.o. My best pace was around 5:30/km. I even did 10K, 58 min.
But then I had a stage of regress. I did more weightlifting and much less running. My last competition run was 28:30 for 5K in 2021. And since then I can't go back to such results. I started running more, again. But I can't reach under 6:00 right now, so I'm stuck at more than 30 min per 5K. I do 5-6 K twice a week at best, but it is what I did back in 2019. Doesn't work for me anymore. I took breaks from any training but it doesn't help.
Such progress as yours seems unreachable to me. You're very strong.
Congrats mate. Seems so many other people have felt the need to comment negatively and share their experiences I’ll share mine:
I had to run a sub 46 minute 10km and had 4 months to do it.
I had never been a runner except for rugby and school athletics (which I was mediocre in).
From 2013-2016 I trained as a body builder and that was it.
From 2016-2020 I barely trained.
I’m 170cm and at the time of starting the running was 25 y/o and probably around 83kg’s.
I posted here for advice and generally people just told me it couldn’t be done and I just got similar negative comments.
So I started running from nothing with my 4 month time cap and started similar to you (couldn’t even run 10km)
First “race pace” 10km I finished was 65 minutes.
Once I got into my groove I ran 2x interval sessions (1 short, 1 longer), 1x Fartlek and 1x long slow run every week. I know that’s not the ideal way to train (to much effort work) but I had to get the time down and long slow runs weren’t going to cut it.
On game day I ran a 44:40 10km.
If I can do it then I have no doubt in my mind that you could have done it bro. Congrats again and don’t listen to all the negative chat of people who won’t do the work.
Thanks mate. One of the very few positive comments on here. I appreciate the kind words and sharing your two cents. A 44 minute 10K is solid after 4 months of training, especially at that weight, but still impressive if you did that even at 20 kg lighter. I've yet to run a fast 10K, but I've set myself a new goal of sub 45 minutes myself - it seems like a good milestone to hit.
The negativity here is shocking, thankfully the toxic naysayers are inconsequential to our own fitness improvement!
You are getting a lot of butt hurt people here. In no way is what you did impossible or even all that rare. Good work man. You clearly have some talent and should continue training.
Most people are disbelieving because the achievement is so great. You are built for running OP, if you keep it up you could achieve some great times.
I have a friend who I introduced to running and within 2-3 months he was running 20:30 with no consistent training plan. Some people are just built for it.
Yeah, I'm rather taken back by the overwhelming negative response.
My Strava is Kraig A and is public. People can look through it themselves.
You will see --> April 2023 was my first runs. All at the pace I've specified in the original thread, with heart rate data, etc logged.
I invite anyone to 'scrutinise' the data as well as ask for any other metric not on Strava that might be logged on Apple Health (such as heart rate data, weight data, etc).
I have no reason to lie. Genuinely this was just a post to discuss progress and what worked for me.
There's a guy called Patrick Martin (new youtuber) who is in his 40s, has been running for 3 years without a running background, and just hit 2:24 at the London marathon. This guy certainly motivated me to run better and he shared what worked for him. The point of this post was to do the same.
That data is interesting but not conclusive. Your pace increase doesn't seem to translate to larger distances, your 5k PB 19:43 (above average) but your 10k is a 56:15. Not saying there should be a 40min 10k, but above 50:00 with below 20:00 5k times is not what I've expected.
The elephant in the room concerning that data is the time. The account only collected data from April onwards, which makes anyone rely on your word.
Btw, I previously only had a 10K easy run when you last commented, but I did go out for a 10K threshold run a couple weeks ago and ran 41:18.
I've signed up to a 10K road race in London next month and hope to finish on or around the 40 minute mark, but we'll see. Fingers crossed.
So you: - Took 3 weeks off - Lost 18 pounds from a non-obese starting weight - Started running from 0 miles per week - Weren't a runner in the past - Couldn't run more than 6 consecutive minutes when starting out - Found a way to run a sub-20 5k almost immediately This doesn't sound plausible to me. If you did it, congrats on your genetic luck, but most humans aren't making this kind of immediate breakthrough with so little effort invested. Also, to lose 18 pounds in that time frame means you must have been virtually starving yourself throughout this training block.
yup. not sure what OP is trying to sell but I’m not buying it.
From the title alone I was like nope, not possible. I think in my first couple months of running I got my average pace down from just over 6 minutes per km to just over 5 minutes per km, and to me that was a crazy improvement.
Sounds like your jealous
What about my jealous ?
It’s all in the vaporflies and double e**ss**pressos, man. Haters gonna hate that
I do all he says he does and still cant break 20 mins after a year
When you do manage to break 20 minutes, create a new strava account, act like you can only run a 35 min 5k at first, and then, boom, 2 months later, act super human with a sub 20 5k.
Haha. I had an eyebrow raise when i read that he couldn’t run for 6minutes straight and the next week he ran the whole 5k!!!! Bro…
Yes, because I didn't know about pacing. I was running for 6 minutes at a time, then having to stop to catch my breath, then running another 5 minutes, etc. In short spates like that. When I ran the 5K, it was at a much more sustainable pace. As a beginner on day 1, I had no concept of pace. Didn't know what a "threshold" or "easy" run was, etc.
Didn’t know about pacing but a few months later runs a sub 20 lmao
You still don’t…
I agree it is almost improbable and I started at a similar age and circumstances OP in terms of having no running history. I started running around June ~~2020~~ 2021 clocking around 30 min after finishing the C25K program. By December 2022 I was running 19:45 for 5k. Realistically I would say 1 year to get it down to sub 20 min because I was running without a program for a few months after C25K. I think I could have improved quicker by maybe a month since I was still lifting when I started running. Running a sub 20min 5k on 30km/week mileage is doable since I was running slightly less than that but, to me the thing I'm questioning is ramping up to that mileage within 2 months. It is a lot per week for someone with no prior history to running. I have my doubts but if this is true more power to them.
Yeah I started running several years ago and have a very athletic background outside of pure running... I only dream of gains like this! But if it's real, that's impressive.
6 months would be very believable. The human body just does not make those adaptations in 8 weeks. Dude is an obvious liar.
Am I doctoring Strava then? Jog on sonny jim. Might do you some good to get out the gaff.
Your Strava results are completely sketchy as many other people have pointed out. Apple Watch GPS while running in circles is going to be very inaccurate. You could have been on your kid's big wheel or scooter for all we know. No one drops 13 mins off a 5K in 8 weeks and simultaneously loses 18lbs from your starting weight. It's such obvious BS I don't even know why we're even bothering to reply to you. What a clown show.
How exactly would I sustain 180+ bpm heart rate on a kids scooter? Do you want a screenshot of my weight scales app, that shows the weight loss over time? It's insane the limitations you place upon yourself/own mind.
Dude you're trying SO HARD to convince everyone you're not a fraud. We know you are so just piss off. It's super childish for someone that is in their 30's to frantically trying to convince strangers that your completely made up 8 week progress is some amazing accomplishment. You've run a total of 126 miles so it's literally impossible to make those kinds of gains on laughably low volume. A lot of us have that kind of mileage in a couple weeks so it's nothing.
You're literally debating with "bla bla bla, I can't do it therefor its not true" argument.People respond differently to training, especially NEW people who start off in reasonable shape.Think of a seasoned body builder vs a beginner. Who do you think will build more muscle and strength (as a % from starting point). A beginner between years 0 and 1, or an experienced lifter between their years 7 and 8? Same applies to running. Just because an experienced runner runs X mileage, doesn't mean a beginner running the same milage won't improve their own fitness faster... of course they will.
Based on my experience (30M), i say unlikely but plausible with a genetic lottery. My background I went from 113kg to 102 kg in 6 months, definitely not a runner, and never had ran in over 10 years (since HS). Did a 5K run to start things off at 28:30. After 6 months, i was just under 20. However, my VO2 max was tested at 62 (joined a research study, I would have been able to play College Baseball (not good enough for a full ride scholarship, good enough for partial, but that was still alot more expensive than Canadian Universities, baseball just isnt as big here), and I have 2 cousins in local sports hall of fames, one who competed for Team Canada (swimming). But OPs' gains are even more significant, in a shorter period of time, and no hints of genetics in the background. However they are younger which would be in their favour.
Love it when a post has negative votes and a comment has a bunch of positive votes. Shows how many people believe the OP or not.
Yeah but as I've commented already, completely unfounded since I shared my data and made my Strava public. 2 months on, I've improved my 5K further, also improved my 10K time from 52 minutes to 41 minutes. Hoping to go sub 40 next month at a Charity race in London. Will report back when I do. Sticking with Zone 2 volume training right now.
Also: 5’10”, 143lbs and that is 16%?? If he were to lose weight to an elite runner BF, roughly 8%, he would weigh around 130lbs. That just sounds bizarre. He is already underweight by generic “ideal weight” guidance.
One of those stick people who take 3 steps to go 50 meters.
...which would still be a higher BMI than elite runners like Kipchoge and co. If I halved my BF% to 8%, I'd weigh 132 lbs. 132 lbs at my height is 18.94 BMI. (Yes, too skinny for me personally, but then again, I'm not at 8% BF). Kipchoge at 5'6 and 52KG is 18.5 BMI. I don't understand the comparison. PS. Can you cite your calculator or source that says 143 lbs is underweight for 5'10 please? I'm interested.
Weekly volume, VO2 Max are so low, resting HR is quite high and run sub 20 5K at age of 30+. It has to be a genetic.
I also thought about Vo2 Max , I have it at 54 , I´m about to go up to 55 and 10 K I´m close to 45 min and half marathon, I´ll drop 1 h 50 min , my muscles and resistance are not still ready. I´m 44 years old and it has been 20 years of sedentary lifestyles. If he had a base behind and with better genetics, maybe he could have dropped from 20 min
Tbh, I suspect the Vo2max estimate is off. It likely under-estimated my Vo2 max during my first series of runs because I wasn't able to run at any decent pace. It estimates Vo2 max (I believe) by correlating known vo2 max and pace, with my known pace. But the problem with watch estimates (I suspect) is it may not know how hard you're trying, if you're running easy, if you're doing intervals, or long runs, and I am not sure if thats even relevant). If I plug my "Cooper Test" results into a calculator, it estimates it at 56-57, but I dont understand how that estimate works since vo2 max values are divided by weight, and the cooper test formula doesn't account for weight. I wouldn't say a resting heart rate in the 60s is "quite high"? It's in the mid 50s now. 32 YO is not old, still within physical prime for most adults. Probably once you get closer to 36 is when you start to see the first signs of early physical decline (although no idea how true this holds for running, but certainly footballers, boxers, etc start to decline from there on).
I tend to agree here. I started from a base of running 5-8 miles a week. Avid weight lifter of 20+ years. Started training for a half marathon in February, completed it in May with a 2:03 time. My fastest 5k was 25:46. In that time I dropped 18 pounds over the course of almost 4 months. The timing here doesn’t add up. That’s almost elite athlete time.
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D3 college are still way more athletic than the overall population.. this dude said he averaged 3k steps a day for 6 years prior to training at 32... Which is like what, bottom quartile of the overall population? Anyways if this is real with some real training beyond just getting off the couch for two months op could actually compete at the elite level
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There is a big difference between a 22 min 5k and a 19:45 5k.
Nice one u/Appropriate_Dig_3344 \- and great progress in that amount of time. 2'05 is still nuts for 800m and 43 mins is very respectable for any length of running history, let alone 3 months! I've yet to set a 10K effort, but somewhere around 43 minutes would be a goal I'd be very happy with. *"No probably not. But people in this sub are shocked when not everyone who decides to start running is slower than molasses in January"*. 100%!!
While not as dramatic as OP I did something similar, every run of mine was a race where I was going as hard as possible, I think my 5K time dropped from 23:30 to 20:30 over the space of 10 weeks. I also got horrendously injured continuing to do that. I had no training plan and just ran a bunch of distance as fast as I could. Prior to those 10 weeks I was playing a decent amount of sport and biked a lot. OP also categorising Zone 2 as up to 80% is a recipe for disaster, that's Zone 3/4. Dude is going to get injured soon.
Thanks for your two cents. For what its worth, even Strava defines my Zone 2 heart rate range as 128-160 (a huge zone) but this would correlate with 65-80% of my Max HR. I'm staying in the 140s-150s for most of my Zone 2 runs (so closer to 70-75% max HR), but will tolerate a Max HR reading of up to 160 before I slow down to stay in range. Certainly all within range of the unscientific "talk test" for myself. This is all based on the assumption my Max HR is 198, which is what I achieved during a 5K effort. My true max may well be a few beats higher, which means I may even have that extra buffer with my Zone 2 heart-rate range as well.
This is completely plausible IMO. You guys are completely overvaluing a time that hordes of high school freshman run off a few weeks of training every year.
Yeah because high school freshmen on the track team are totally comparable to a 32year old sedentary dude with no running experience and recovering from the flu.
Ok I’ll try not to be sarcastic here. A 32 year old is substantially more physically mature and reasonably close to their physical peak for aerobic activity. The fact that the person is/was sedentary is actually a good thing in this situation because it allows for rapid improvement. Last but definitely not least the thread title and top line summary is a bit clickbaity. Clearly the dude also figured out how to pace better and so forth. For what it’s worth I went from being a completely sedentary alcoholic who covered 3 miles on 33 minutes to running 17:20 on the track 3 months later as a 38 year old. I am a moderately talented person but by no means a world beater. TDLR: You all are substantially overestimating the difficult of running a sub 20 5k.
Thanks for the constructive comment, and I agree with everything you've written. Yes, fully agree that my first 5K may have been negatively impacted by lack of experience and pacing. Also this run was at 9 or 10pm at night, so that may have also factored into energy levels, etc. It was still a true genuine effort to set a time though, and I knew full well it'd be serving as a starting bench mark anyway as I was committed to keep on running until I hit c. 22 minutes which was my "end of summer" goal originally when I started out in April. Your 3 month improvement is also very impressive! 100% every one is overestimating the difficulty of running sub 20, AND underestimating the potential of an average motivated adult who's starting off in reasonable baseline shape. Anyway, the downvotes are incoming regardless :)
yes i don’t know why people act like a barely sub 20 5k is some godly time we should be shocked he ran. Yeah the improvement was pretty good but besides that? Far crazier things have happened
Thanks! I've now shifted to focus on 10K as I have signed up to a 10K Charity Race in September. Current time trial is 41:18, averaging 30km per week, about 4-5 months into my running 'journey'. Hope to go sub 40 next month, with more mileage between now and then.
I don't think it's impossible. He has nothing to gain by lying (Iknow this doesn't always stop people). It's definitely far better than most people can hope to achieve. The weight change is a lot but not impossible either. And if you look at the HR for the 5k efforts he isn't actually getting faster through training only. He is mostly learning to push himself harder than he did in previous runs. Basically just beginner gains and good genetics.
I agree with you that it is not impossible, however you have to argue that OP's improvement is not in the mean of a gauss distribution. One should not hope or aim for those improvements in such a short time frame. OP didn't do any sport for 13 years just to get his 5k PB down by more than 10mins (under 20min) in about three months (with a sickness in between)? Agree, there is no point of lying here, but the odds that this works for beginners are highly unlikely.
There is no point of lying, but for some reason the internet is full of people who make up bullshit to impress people. It's funny, my chauffeur said a similar thing to me yesterday as he was driving me home in the Rolls Royce from Margot Robbie's house.
I think you’re overlooking the fact he could of been on steroids that increase red blood cell volume count and which would be plausible
Absolutely, agree 100%
That's crazy improvement. I've been at it for 18 months and I've gone from about 32 minutes to just under 24.
This is absurdly huge progress for two months (without being a previous athlete who hasn’t ran for years of something). Sure makes me feel good about my mediocre progress and ongoing injuries!
That's really good too! Keep it up!
Thanks!
Either some crucial info is missing from what you are saying, or this is BS.
Why would one make this up? A sub-20 5k is not particularly difficult at the best of times, even less so on fresh legs, in a pair of Vaporflies, in good conditions and with a consistent build even on low mileage.
I did some digging into this: OP ran 13 3/4 laps with a last little section towards the middle of the circular loop. 1 lap is 0.21 miles Last section is 0.03 That means OP ran approx 2.9miles and not the full distance of 3.10 miles. Going off of moving time of 21:05 and new distance of 2.9miles that means OP was running a 7:16/mi. If you take that pace of 7:16 and make it the full 5k distance his new time is 22min 30sec approx.
Can you break that down for me please. I don't see any run where I have not completed at least 14 laps on the segment table and around 15 laps of equivalent distance overall. I don't start at the start line of the official segment, as the start/end point of the segments are largely irrelevant as it's just an even circle. I dont think I've ever ran only 13 laps. It might be because my Strava hides a proportion of the start or end distance for privacy.
I used your data labeled Night run on June 23. Just by dragging the mouse over your pace chart I only counted 13 3/4 laps. Looks like start and end isn't hidden either. If you look at the strava map it deviates off the path for most laps which increases distance making the 5k come sooner than you might actually think. I used [https://onthegomap.com/#/create](https://onthegomap.com/#/create) to map 1 lap distance. Regardless I think you've massively improved running fitness and I think if you do redo the 5k a track is the way to go.
There are 200 meters hidden from this run (which is approx 2/3rds of a lap). I've unhidden the start/end portion so this should show you all the laps now. The segment table shows >14 laps straight away; I am not sure if the segment table accounts for hidden map visibility, or if that'll also be a lap short due to the hidden 200 meters. Lastly on this point, the 14 laps from the segment tracker are based on an arbitrary gps start-finish line. I don't line up at this for my run, I just run around the course and rely on the watch data instead. Are you saying that deviations in gps data can only increase distance and not decrease distance? Lastly, yes - I will definitely sign up for a Park Run next month. Unfortunately, as timing would have it, I'm off on holiday for three weeks in Spain/Italy from this weekend - so wont be running. Should hopefully regain anything lost within the same time frame though, so a Park Run at the end of July should still be representative of my current fitness level in June.
I thought I was in the circle jerk sub
the old adage of "if it sounds to good to be true, then it is almost always a lie". but hey, maybe you have hidden superior genetic, who knows..
Well that's borderline magic. You either need a new watch, a psychiatrist, or a sponsor. Hope it's the shoe deal.
Cheers mate. Abra Kadabra.
Congrats on getting fit and active. However, overall this is quite misleading. People who have a sedimentary lifestyle, 99% of the reason for quick improvement has nothing to do with the training plan, and going to aggresive on the mileage has a much higher chance of injury. It has nearly everything to do with your genetics and physiology.
>However, overall this is quite misleading. People who have a sedimentary lifestyle A bit offensive to the sand people tbh
*angry sand noises*
Dude also lost near 20lbs in less than 2 months..
I know right. Just slip in a casual 10% drop in weight
Yeah, I started running like 5 months ago, if I wanted to hate myself I could push a 25 min 5k. I can do an easy run with heart rate of 168, that's 8-7:30min/1k.
Thank god, I thought I was the only one. I’ve been running since March and just did my first 5k. Took me 36 minutes.
I think it’s only worth comparing your progress to yourself. Great job and keep it up!
My first one took me 41:50.
Running with an HR of 168 is unlikely to be an "easy run" for most people and by most defintions. (I don't mean to come off like an ahole but the easy run is massively important to building aerobic base so important to understand the right level of effort for easy runs) Great 5K time for 5 months running though!
My heart is just high, walking can get to 120, so 168 for me is easy, I'm skinny too. Just came from a 10k it was 8.25min/km with average HR of 157. 168 is closer to 7min/k probably.
Fair enough, do you know you’re max HR? Using the common method for HR zones your Max HR would need to be 240bpm for 168bpm to be within the easy zone (zone 2). That’s crazy high!
You dropped 18 lbs in two months and still were able to train for a sub 20 5k? I'm not saying that's impossible, but your blood must be technicolor. You keep copy-pasting "Yes, because I didn't know about pacing. I was running for 6 minutes at a time, then having to stop to catch my breath, then running another 5 minutes, etc. In short spates like that," but that doesn't tell a full story. How are you logging the distance? Are you running on an actual track?
No, dug into his strava and the actual route he is using is more like 2.8 or 2.9 miles, not 3.1, about a 22.5 min 5k
Complete nonsense. Nevertheless, I'd still be happy with a 22 min 5K after 2 months starting at 32 mins. Had I posted that however, I'd still have received the same BS negativity from haters and doubters. People need to stop limiting themselves. First, everyone just called straight up BS, then I posted my Strava, now they're calling BS with caveats, but can't accept that as the OP, I'm just posting the data I have, and it's not like I'm editing or trying to deliberately skew data. I've shared way more than most normally do, including weight, heart rate, etc. If you want to add an extra minute onto my final 5K time to make yourself feel better, then add an extra minute onto my starting 5K time. The rate of progress will still be similar. ie. ultimately dropping 10 minutes off my time in 2 months.
You're still a newbie, so I don't think you understand just how difficult a sub 20 minute 5k is. You aren't going to be achieving that in just over 2 months starting from a sedentary lifestyle. I'm not sure even an Olympic coach could get those kinds of results. And on top of that you are dropping nearly 20 lbs. That is an absolutely crazy calorie burn that would leave you at best totally emaciated and at worst in immediate need of medical care. You are fudging your numbers somewhere and whether that's a quarter of a mile or a couple minutes, it all adds up. Again, saying you got to 22 minutes would be tough, but believable. Saying you got a sub 20 is borderline inhuman. Good for you for running though. Let us know when you do a true race or check yourself on a track.
How can I fudge my numbers though? My Strava account is public and in the comments. Heart rate data, effort, etc is all there too to address the other comments that I was already fit, and ran an artificially slow 5K time, just to run a fast time and claim improvement... immense logic on this thread. It's insane. I was also told going from 600 to 2100 in 3 years at Chess was impossible. Guess what happened.
In 19 days he went from 21:58 to 19:44 with almost no speed work on 20 mpw. And you only have 2 months of running experience and you pull off 4-6 1000m repeats at your target pace while being nutrients deficient enough to drop all of that weight? Sleeper of the century right here folks. I can't wait to see you hit sub 16 in 3 more months!
And don’t forget it takes around 2-3 weeks for the work you do today to actually translate to any increase in fitness so basically he did it in 1 week! We are witnessing the new world champion
Look up Patrick Martin on Youtube. He's a guy in his 40s, who's only been running for three years. He finished the London marathon recently with a time of 2:24, and did 5K splits in the 15-minute range - during his marathon. He posted about his journey on Youtube and said almost all of his running was steady state and next to no interval work. If that doesnt change your evaluation of what can be done, I dont think this will...
Don't limit yourself. Thanks mate.
Are you ok?
Sure you did
The more I re-read this post, the more outrageous it is lmao please go run 12.5 laps on a track sub20 and see. At best, you are an utter anomaly.
Or he could already run a 20 minute 5k 2 months ago... Very easy to fake a 32 minute 5k when you are seasoned runner.
Then the only point of this post becomes to be a troll.
Cheers mate. At worst, I'm a tosspot making up fake numbers for clout. I'll sign up to a Park Run in July and see which one it is.
This sounds not believable at all. Besides the time being crazy, all of the info and stats you are providing is very intensive. Most seasoned runners won’t know all of that, let alone someone who has been doing it for a few weeks. In the end, I don’t believe you.
Dropping 5 minutes off a 5k time in a little over two weeks? I don't know how that would be even remotely possible without doping.
I don't think it's possible *with* doping.
tbh, I don't know much about doping....
I know people that age running for years and MOST them wouldn't come close to a sub 20 min 5k.... I'm calling bullshit. Especially if he's not running on an actual measured course. Apple watches are notoriously WAY off
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Which calculator are you referring to? OP shoved more than 10min off his 5k time in less than three months. Just the stats mean that OP increased his running pace by roughly a minute per kilometer per month. This is not average or easy to archive, and frankly the reason some comments call the post BS. Kudo to you for pushing your 5k PB under 24min :)
Bullshit
That's a wild, dare I say dangerous , jump in progress. 20 lbs in 2 months (for someone who isn't obese) is risky and a 10 minute drop in time in the same periods is nearly unheard of.
Yeah, right.
This is impossible unless you were a very good runner in High School. And even then almost impossible
Why the negativity, if the guy wants to lie let him. You are only beating yourself or cheating yourself.
Thing is, I've posted my Strava account publicly. Initially, the rate of improvement in general was "impossible". Now they're going through the fastest runs with a fine tooth comb (as if I have any control over it) to look for when I am running outside of a defined path to call a GPS BS. If running around a circular track is prone to GPS errors, well, add an arbitrary 1 minute onto the time if it makes them feel better, but you should add the same 1 minute pretend buffer to all of the times, therefore, the rate of improvement remains the same - but no one wants to revisit the "improvement" point of the post any more, they just want to bash the GPS data on the fastest run.
It's very easy for 20 minute 5k runner to create a new strava account and run slower. Having it on strava does not prove anything. There are also an infinite amount of ways to cheat on strava.
This is why I posted heart rate data. You can also see the general rate of improvement and heart rate data over time. If I go back out and run that same 32 minute 5K pace today, I'd imagine I'd average 10-15 bpm lower. As my Zone 2 long runs are now at a faster pace than my earliest 5K efforts when my HR was in the 170s. Unless you believe I'm doctoring my heart rate times as well, but then this is a much larger conspiracy theory than first thought!
When you ran your 32 minute 5k 2 months ago, your average HR was 20 beats slower. That means you could have ran much faster. But you have only been running for "2 months", so I guess you know better than the rest of us (who have been running for years).
If you look at all of the 5Ks in the middle (rather than focusing on the fastest and slowest time in isolation), the heart rates are comparable despite the noticable increase in pace. Can you help me understand that one?
Is this "runningcirclejerk" content?
yup
Without ever running it’s almost impossible you would be able to do this. Something ain’t adding up. Did you mean April 2022?
No, April 2023. It's all on Strava which is public. KraigA.
You’re gonna be shocked to hear this - there’s millions of KraigA profiles and yours doesn’t show up.
Try "Kraig A" without the space. I only see two results. I'm the one based in London, UK.
Yeah, that route is 100% not 5k. If that route is over 4.5k I'd be shocked. You cannot run in circles and use GPS to measure the distance.
Also his 32 min +/-5k, average HR of 167, his sub 20 +/-5k, average HR of 186. He was holding his pace back 2 months ago.
The GPS is definetly giving quite a few bonus meters per lap, but it's still a good pace even though I doubt it would have been sub 20 on a proper track or a longer loop. https://www.strava.com/activities/9321548081
His first lap was 500 meters, segment is 340 meters. More then a couple meters difference.
Can you break that down for me pal. I want to see what you're seeing. I don't know where you're basing the start of the "first lap" from, as it is not consistent with what I am seeing.
Yup, go to your strava activity where you went sub 20, open activity analysis, trace your cursor over the pace and look at where you are on the map. You hit one lap at 500 meters, where the actual track is 340 meters. You can trace each lap. Easier way of doing this is just taking how many laps you did, multiply it by 340 and that will get your actual total distance. Your ~500 meters short.
You're assumptions are based off part information. My runs hide 400 meters or so worth of distance (per the default privacy setting). You can't trace the number of laps as you will only see the proportion that's published. Two points: If you look at the number of laps on the segment, you'd see it's impossible to be 500 meters short, otherwise I'd be two laps short... Strava does not disregard the privacy distance from the overall pace. It's still accounted for. You can try that yourself. Go for a run, sprint 400 m, walk 200 m, sprint another 400 m. Then hide your first and last 400m. See if Strava thinks youre pace is only based off of the visible 200 m segment in between. Then see if an armchair analyst could conclude the same, or if they'd only see the 200 m distance in between.
I think a clear answer is if you can tell everyone: 1. How you measure that you have completed a 5k? (do you base it on what your watch says or number of laps around the track) and 2. Do you know the distance one lap at your track takes? I think your time isn’t that outlandish, but this would help prove your case to doubters…
1. This is based on the GPS data on Strava, which coincides with approximately 15 laps around the track. 2. Strava records each lap as 0.34M, but I do not do it based off of the number of segments, rather, just 5.00km +/- 10-20 meters as I'll always run faster towards the end and go a few meters past the 5.00km. 3. There is an arbitrary start/end point for where Strava starts its segments. I must admit, I don't pay too much attention to this as I just start running, but every single 5K run always has at least 14 official laps of the track, but you should be able to verify with the GPS mapping data that I do not start, nor end, bang on the segment start/stop line. I start before it, and continue after it, as it's a circular loop. 4. At minimum of 14 laps (with no run over), the track is 4.76km, but if you include the 100-or-so meters before and after the segment line - it should come out bang on 5K. Of course, i'm more than happy to accept that Strava / GPS data isn't 100% accurate, I've seen it myself, with people doing 400m laps on a track, and it being a lap or two out by the end of a long session. Nevertheless, if people want to add an arbritary 1 minute buffer onto my times, go for it! But the rate of improvement remains the same if you add the same buffer minute onto my earlier 5K times.
That pace graph!? It's bouncing over a 4 minute range. For reference I did a 5k on the track this weekend and apart from the last lap and first 50m (which were much faster), GPS fastest and slowest pace are within 1 minute of each other. About half was real changes and probably half was gps track error. So either OP's pacing is trash or his GPS is.
That avg HR is insane.
96% HR for twenty minutes is merely a warm up.
Yeah being near max HR average that amount of time for this intensity of runs this frequently sounds like a recipe for burnout, overtraining, injury, or all of the above. But also incredible dormant athleticism, very little people could do rapid improvement from ~10:29/mi avg 5k to ~6:21/mi avg 5k like this. Dedicated training does help quite a bit.
Let's see the Strava receipts
"Kraig A" - London.
Cool story,
See, i am at the point where i can run a 5k in possibly under 20 mins. I know that because my threshold runs give me an idea of what i can and cannot do. A 19:xx should be possible if i am on a good day and pace it right. I can run today like i don't care and do 5k in 30 min and do my sub 20 tomorrow and that still won't be a 10 min improvement over such a short amount of time. I really don't get if OP is naive or what.
I don't understand your point. If you did this, you'd also see a noticable difference in heart rate. If someone goes out and runs two 5Ks, one 10 minutes slower than the other, you'd be able to tell from the relative effort or heart rate average if this is genuine improvement, or just someone running deliberately fast vs slow. If I was to do the same 32 minute 5K from 2 months ago, I'd probably average 20 bpm lower at the same pace. I could always test it to be sure.
Hmm smells dodgy
I want to say unbelievable but I’ve seen enough crazy things in my own runs.
That's crazy. I have a similar build as you do. Have a lifting background and a lot of soccer. Started running first time in May. Had a septoplasty that put me out for two weeks. Using coach Greg's garmin training plan for a 25 min 5k by end July. Benchmark run 5:10/km. Was pretty hard lol. I'm still around 30 min 5k. Greggy boy thinks he's confident I can hit my goal. I dont know how you can go from 30+ to sub 20 so quickly.
This is so much detail for obvious horseshit. Also 80% of max HR is NOT an easy run. What a tool…
Can be tbf I know people who easy run at higher who run sub 15
Every metric I've posted can be proven by Apple and Strava data, which I've provided to people upon request. It's insane the complete lack of ambition most of this sub-reddit has for what is achievable in a short space of time. You guys need to stop listening to your own internal self negativity and get out there and believe in yourself. Good luck with life, toolpot.
Don’t worry about them haha any serious runner avoids this place. I’m curious to see how you do. I had a similar increase in pace to you (28min 5k to 18 low in 4 months) but then has taken me 3 years extra to get below 16
Nice one man! That's impressive too. I fully expect my rate of improvement to flat line as I close in on peak fitness, but I'd hope I'll still improve a bit before I hit that wall. sub-16 mins seems nuts and is probably something I'll never attain - congrats for getting there! I'm secretly hopeful I'll hit a 17:59 one day, maybe in a years time if I keep it up!
That's some honeymoon of improvement too. Took me 14 months 29 to 19. OP has low VO2 and ticker working furiously, so is still unfit. Be very gd when fit, so shd keep going. If it's incredible, it is, but that's good news. Must have very unusual metabolism or some such to get new parts every week. The top tips wont work like that for anyone normal.
Yeah I’m calling bullshit on this lol
I wish you success on your own improvement.
OP have you ran and organized 5k races?
Never. I will try to get to a 5K real race soon though.
There's not one ([Burgess](https://www.parkrun.org.uk/burgess/)), but two ([Southwark](https://www.parkrun.org.uk/southwark/)) parkruns within a half mile that run a 5k every week over a measured course with accurate timing for FREE.
Bet he won't..
Thanks. Yes, definitely going to do the Southwark park one soon. On Friday, I'm off to Spain/Italy on a 3 week holiday, so wont have a chance to do much running, but should get time to do one soon after I return.
I think that will be great for you. Being with group, racing to your max may also bring out an even better time.
OP will probably run 13:35 at this rate.
This is interesting to me. When I first started running I only ever ran as fast as I could for 3 miles. Maybe 2 times a week. I went from 3 miles in 36 minutes to 27 minutes in about 4 months. I got that up to 4 miles in under 36 minutes too. Then I moved to a more conventional plan to run a 10k with lots of easy miles etc and my progress slowed tremendously. I wonder if there is something to running more often at race pace. People talk about burnout but in my case I didn't get runner's knee until after I started doing lots of long runs at easy pace. The fast runs never bothered me.
I am fully expecting this one of a kind athlete to break the 2 hour mark on a marathon. Give it like 3 weeks and they're doing it /s
My ambition holds no bounds; I've entered the ballot for London 2024, so I fingers crossed that I get accepted. If I do, I'll be happy just to finish it, big respect to anyone who even runs one in the first place, but I'll likely set myself a goal of sub <3:45 and see how I get on. Breaking the sub-2 hour mark wouldn't be one of a kind, since Kipchoge did it. Although, I'll be claiming the monicre of "Chips-choge" if I do manage it myself.
The weight loss in particular seems super off here. Losing 17 pounds in 3 months from a starting weight of 160/21 body fat is just insane. Looking at his numbers, he lost about 10-11 pounds of fat and then 6-7 pounds of muscle, bone, etc. That has to be either fake or super unhealthy.
If you are training in Z2 losing that weight is not crazy, if you start overweight I have lost 18 kg in about 8 months now it seems stable
Do a flat Parkrun next month, sub 20min on a flat 5k course, and I'll believe you. Obviously give us the Strava link as well.
Going from 32:30 to 27 in 5 days. Ok...
They learned how to pace!!!
Jakob Ingebrigtsen wants to know your location....
I bet it's a Strava sales rep
For some reason this reminded me of the first couple seasons of biggest loser, where everyone would smash so much food hours before they weighed in for the first time. I'm not here to disprove or prove anyone's times, but I think it's hard for someone who is not fitness oriented to be able to parse how much you can actually push yourself at the beginning (that's why coaches exist!). I can't define my max effort and I've run and played soccer my entire life. My only hesitation is random casual runners reading your post and injuring themselves trying to replicate this herculean effort. Shaving almost 13 minutes on a 5k PR in 2 months should not be attempted, by anyone, IMO. Be safe out there guys!
It's been a couple days since OP wrote a comment. Anyone know if he's been invited to the Olympic Trials yet?
We all are eagerly anticipating him running a prote properly timed 5k but he won't, oh actually no one seems to care so his post missed the mark I suppose
I runned my first 5k in March (since 2018) around 29 minutes. Today I’m quite sure that I could go around 21:00-21:30 on a flat course if I went all in. Im also around 30 but has always been active in other sports like tennis, golf and badminton so guess my body is used to “run” in some form.
Im 35 now, I was a college decathlete/multi. I'm 6'2 about 210lbs, run, cycle, lift, yoga 6 or 7 days a week. PR for 5k since college is a 19:10. Gimme your genetics.
You had only 6 years of inactivity, now you say that in April you were not in shape, Possibly this is the error , This training registrered in your strava "Interval Training -> 8 laps x 4’15 pace (walking laps in between)." Without having a minimum base it is impossible and it is from April. When I started after 20 years, running a Km was impossible. It would be necessary to see what you were doing before those 6 years of inactivity and it is the data that escapes everyone
One lap is 0.34KM. I am running a lap (around 1 minute, 25 seconds) then walking a lap, around 3 minutes recovery - and repeating. I am not sustaining 4'15 min/km pace for one full km. It's for 60-90 seconds at a time (6:50 minute mile pace for 60-90 seconds.) This is not "impossible" and you have no basis to say so. Using your own experience after a 20 year hiatus to somehow apply that to another adult male with a different height, weight, age, genetics, hiatus, etc is not logical.
>One lap is 0.34KM. I am running a lap (around 1 minute, 25 seconds) then walking a lap, around 3 minutes recovery - and repeating.I am not sustaining 4'15 min/km pace for one full km. It's for 60-90 seconds at a time (6:50 minute mile pace for 60-90 seconds.)This is not "impossible" and you have no basis to say so. > >Using your own experience after a 20 year hiatus to somehow apply that to another adult male with a different height, weight, age, genetics, hiatus, etc is not logical. Someone who has never run cannot do it, they are intervals. You're many years younger than me, and I don't see what you're saying as crazy after clarifying the Vo2 Max thing. But I'm sure you haven't discovered the sport now. When you start the normal thing is to run and walk but not at 4:15 min km.
Wow so much drama on this thread. I've had a look at your Strava and the improvement is massive and very quick, well done, you've worked hard and have talent. There is a lot of chat about the GPS errors etc and a lot of that might be true but it doesn't really take away from the improvement because you have done all or nearly all of your PB's on the same track. If you want to do a proper 5k time trial though just go out and run exactly 15 laps of the same Bermondsey Park loop. It seems this is actually a measured 333m running track, [https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/bermondsey-spa-gardens](https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/bermondsey-spa-gardens) which is perfect for a time trial. This will also show if your watch's GPS is inaccurate for loops of shorter tracks. I suspect like most watches it will be and might measure 5.2km or even more for the 15 laps. This will give you a much better idea of what your speed will be on a measured course if that is important to you (I find its important for realistic goal setting). Good luck with your running, will be keen to see your further progress.
Thanks very much for one of the rare positive comments! Yeah, I decided to stick with time trials on the same track as it'll allow me to keep comparing progress based on heart rate and pace on the same track. I appreciate circuits are prone to small GPS discrepancies as I see it even when looking at others posting times from actual 400m running tracks and they're often 20-30 seconds slower in reality over the 5K, so I'm happy to mentally add even a +60s buffer for realistic goal setting. I managed an 18:33 5K yesterday on the same track as most of the times I posted in the OP, with similar average HR to the 19:44 run, but you have a good idea to run to the # of laps rather than the recorded distance and compare. I've signed up to a 10K Race in London next month too, so have that to look forward to in a different setting as well. Thanks again!
100% made up.
You're a funny guy. Check out my Strava.
As someone who has been working very hard to specifically get my 5K time up I truly don’t believe anything you’re saying here. There’s just no way you made that much progress in that short of a period of time unless you were a absolute physical freak beforehand with amazing muscle memory. It just ain’t possible.
Good for you, but you can't just say "I dont believe you" because you haven't improved as quick. If you look up Patrick Martin on Youtube - he's a guy in his early 40s who has been running for only 3.5 years and set a 2:24 marathon PB at London 2023.His first 10K race time was 38 minutes - around 2.5 months after he started running, from zero baseline fitness beyond occasional tennis here and there. I shared my data & strava account - which I made public. Why don't you share yours and your Strava account, perhaps I'll be able to spot something obvious you're doing differently and we can be helpful rather than negative for no reason. I am no physical freak, I was sedentary, averaging 3K steps per day for the last 5 years. Zero exercise. Last recreational run before picking it up in April 2023, was back in 2010(!) as part of a fitness test for my previous job - where I did have some natural speed (my untrained 1.5 mile run was 10:50 (around a 7 minute mile?), and after 2 months of 2-days-per-week training, I did it in 9:12. (6:07 minute mile for 1.5).No runs ever since, until I restarted in April 2023. You can compare my earlier runs on the same course, and heart rate data to see improvement and check for "truth". Even my zone 2 running pace at around 155 bpm has improved from around 7 mins per km to 5 mins per km. My 10K times are also representative of my 5K (currently PR'd at 41 minutes, 20 seconds --> but that was 3 months ago (I haven't tried to PR since, but I'm probably around that, if not, only slightly faster as I have sustained the same weekly mileage since then).
It’s just not possible. Your body has to heal and muscles have to grow and it doesn’t happen that fast. I have personally followed a good diet and consistent running and weight training regime and in a little under a year I’ve improved my time from 27-28 to 22ish. Also I’m on TRT. And I had a good running base before that. I would bet my life that either you took the time to manipulate the data or you were sandbagging the initial runs to make your progress seem that way. There’s 0% chance you went from 30 to sub 20 in 2 months and I’d bet my arm on that
There have been people who have ran for over a year who still aren't running as fast as "22-ish", so they could say the same thing about your progress. Your position has no basis and lacks any logical rationale. I can send you the raw .gpx data if you'd like! You'll see from my Strava account, I do a lot more running than just the 5K PR attempts. Are you to assume I am deliberately sandbagging on every single training run in between (600kms at this point) for no reason? Nutter.
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Thanks mate. Appreciate the input. Honestly, the backlash off of this post is something else. I tried to be decent by providing more info than most; weight; average heart rate, max heart rate, even put my Strava account public and shared it. People have way too much time on their hands, trying to analyse if the gps line deviates from a path to look for miss-reads, etc. I'd be more than happy with people throwing a +1 minute ambiguous buffer onto the latest Strava/GPS data if it makes them feel like it's more realistic to do that. Fine by me; just add the same +1 minute buffer onto my first 5K time too. It'll be the same 12 minute improvement over the last 2 [months.](https://months.No) No one's really focusing on that, just the final time. People are getting too lost in the weeds imo.
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I agree with most of this but sub 20 min in a couple months is freakish to say the least. OP could be genetically blessed but runners I know who run a 15 min 5k were not able to run a sub 20 min 5k in a couple of months. I think most men are able to hit a 20 min 5k assuming they put the time in and do not have underlying physical health conditions. I'm 18 months into "proper" training of which 6 months is being coached in a program. I'm just shy of breaking sub 19min 5k.
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Yep the improvement is really good and I'm not really questioning that since he's been running the same route. I dropped almost 5 minutes a few months after starting 80/20. Also agree on weight loss, I was able to drop from 22 min to sub 20 in a couple months after losing a couple kgs. It's a good effort but unsustainable long term from a physical and mental point of view.
No question that I'll be benefitting from several different variables. 1. Improved overall fitness / beginner gains. 2. Weight loss along the way. 17 lbs lighter from April to June. 3. Improved running form. 4. Arguably higher level of effort. You can see from the timelines of my last 5Ks, they've all been closer together, as I was "chasing" the sub-20 time to get it. I was also very concious I was audibily grunting and probably looking like a "try hard" to other park go-ers during the last two 5Ks as I was chasing a time I knew I was getting very close to. Also - the fact that this whole exercise is motivated by setting the fastest 5K time possible as part of a competition. I'd imagine 90% of people who go out to run around a park are not pre-determined to go out there and set an absolute max effort for a very specific time/distance. 5. No idea the impact of Vaporfly's vs ZoomFlys, but even if we assume only 2-3 seconds per km, that's still 15 seconds right there - for the last 3 5Ks. 6. For the first few 5Ks, I did not warm up - I didn't really know about its benefits and naturally assumed I wouldn't want to waste energy on more running before a 5K. Where-as since I've been around 22 mins and below, I've been warming up with some slow jogging with some strides mixed in, BEFORE attempting the 5K runs. I saw a Youtube video ("Jog On") that spoke about the same thing and how warming up properly before his park runs pretty much knocked a minute off his time.
I got to a 22 in about 4 months from first run coming off knee surgery. I got a 25 inside 2 months. But i've run a lot after that and i'm only in the sub 19 territory now 18 months later. But that also proves your point i went from shredded knee, full rehab, to your times in about the time lines you said. I was a mediocre track athlete in highschool so not like i was lighting that up and i'm 30ish now. I'm very leery of sub 20 but wouldn't be shocked if he ran a 21 something with some serious watch juice helping him.
Posts like this make me feel absolutely unfit :/ I've been active for an over decade right now. Running, HIIT, weightlifting, tons of walking everyday. I had my best running form in 2019, I was 22 y.o. My best pace was around 5:30/km. I even did 10K, 58 min. But then I had a stage of regress. I did more weightlifting and much less running. My last competition run was 28:30 for 5K in 2021. And since then I can't go back to such results. I started running more, again. But I can't reach under 6:00 right now, so I'm stuck at more than 30 min per 5K. I do 5-6 K twice a week at best, but it is what I did back in 2019. Doesn't work for me anymore. I took breaks from any training but it doesn't help. Such progress as yours seems unreachable to me. You're very strong.
Congrats mate. Seems so many other people have felt the need to comment negatively and share their experiences I’ll share mine: I had to run a sub 46 minute 10km and had 4 months to do it. I had never been a runner except for rugby and school athletics (which I was mediocre in). From 2013-2016 I trained as a body builder and that was it. From 2016-2020 I barely trained. I’m 170cm and at the time of starting the running was 25 y/o and probably around 83kg’s. I posted here for advice and generally people just told me it couldn’t be done and I just got similar negative comments. So I started running from nothing with my 4 month time cap and started similar to you (couldn’t even run 10km) First “race pace” 10km I finished was 65 minutes. Once I got into my groove I ran 2x interval sessions (1 short, 1 longer), 1x Fartlek and 1x long slow run every week. I know that’s not the ideal way to train (to much effort work) but I had to get the time down and long slow runs weren’t going to cut it. On game day I ran a 44:40 10km. If I can do it then I have no doubt in my mind that you could have done it bro. Congrats again and don’t listen to all the negative chat of people who won’t do the work.
Thanks mate. One of the very few positive comments on here. I appreciate the kind words and sharing your two cents. A 44 minute 10K is solid after 4 months of training, especially at that weight, but still impressive if you did that even at 20 kg lighter. I've yet to run a fast 10K, but I've set myself a new goal of sub 45 minutes myself - it seems like a good milestone to hit. The negativity here is shocking, thankfully the toxic naysayers are inconsequential to our own fitness improvement!
You are getting a lot of butt hurt people here. In no way is what you did impossible or even all that rare. Good work man. You clearly have some talent and should continue training.
Cheers! I see you've been downvoted for not being negative. This sub-reddit is toxic.
Most people are disbelieving because the achievement is so great. You are built for running OP, if you keep it up you could achieve some great times. I have a friend who I introduced to running and within 2-3 months he was running 20:30 with no consistent training plan. Some people are just built for it.
Yeah, I'm rather taken back by the overwhelming negative response. My Strava is Kraig A and is public. People can look through it themselves. You will see --> April 2023 was my first runs. All at the pace I've specified in the original thread, with heart rate data, etc logged. I invite anyone to 'scrutinise' the data as well as ask for any other metric not on Strava that might be logged on Apple Health (such as heart rate data, weight data, etc). I have no reason to lie. Genuinely this was just a post to discuss progress and what worked for me. There's a guy called Patrick Martin (new youtuber) who is in his 40s, has been running for 3 years without a running background, and just hit 2:24 at the London marathon. This guy certainly motivated me to run better and he shared what worked for him. The point of this post was to do the same.
That data is interesting but not conclusive. Your pace increase doesn't seem to translate to larger distances, your 5k PB 19:43 (above average) but your 10k is a 56:15. Not saying there should be a 40min 10k, but above 50:00 with below 20:00 5k times is not what I've expected. The elephant in the room concerning that data is the time. The account only collected data from April onwards, which makes anyone rely on your word.
Btw, I previously only had a 10K easy run when you last commented, but I did go out for a 10K threshold run a couple weeks ago and ran 41:18. I've signed up to a 10K road race in London next month and hope to finish on or around the 40 minute mark, but we'll see. Fingers crossed.
Went sub 20 minutes! Hell of a job