After making some big fitness gains in August and breaking 20 minutes for 5k, I was hopefully that getting below 19 minutes would be a rapid process. It ended up taking a fair bit longer than I expected. My progress plateaued in October and November and it was looking like the 19:00 mark would have to wait until 2023. Suddenly in December, I broke through the plateau and after getting pretty close in the two weeks prior (19:13 and 19:05), had an awesome park run yesterday finishing in 18:50.
I’m very pleased with this result as it’s the fastest 5k I’ve recorded since 2010.
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The training that got me here
After my big ski trip in August, I got back into running consistently in September. I averaged 5 runs per week mostly around the 45 minute mark. That seemed to hold my fitness in place but my 5k time was stubbornly tracking around 19:30.
What seemed to help speed up my times in December was making room for more quality workouts. I had been intending to do hill repeats in the past but hadn’t made it part of my regular training week. In mid November, I got a bit more serious and did a few weeks in a row where I did at least one hill repeat/interval workout.
MIIT to HIIT
The other variable I changed was the intensity of my HIIT workouts. If I’m honest, they had been more like MIIT workouts (medium intensity interval training) because I had been avoiding explosive movements out of concern for the timber floors in our apartment. I had an epiphany one week in November that I could safely do jump moves in our bathroom. Burpees on the tiled floor turned out to be a winning combination (though I had to start wearing shoes and gloves 😅 ).
The plan for breaking 18 minutes
Getting down to 17:59 is going to be a bit harder. I’m anticipating it will take me 6 months (as compared to 3 months to go from 20 minutes to 19 minutes) because performance improvements are not linear in my experience.
My plan is:
- Increase the duration of my workouts during the week from 45 minutes to 60 minutes.
- Add in two quality workouts per week (one set of hill reps and one interval workout). I’ll try to find a group to do these workouts with as I find it hard to push myself on my own.
- Add in a long run on Sundays. Again I’ll try to do it with a friend (or an audio book) to make it psychologically easier. I’ll progressively build up to a 2hr long run.
- Keep doing park run most Saturday.
- Keep doing 45 minutes of HIIT/weight training
What helped me with consistency
The biggest reason for my improvement has been consistency both with the running and the HIIT. I attribute that almost entirely to using Focus Bear every day. Running and HIIT are part of my morning routine.
I built the app to help me develop better habits and it’s working. I’d love you to try it out too 🙂
Hi I'm Jeremy, and I understand the challenges of living with ASD and ADHD.
