- What's up, Trainiacs?
It's a track day.
Earlier today, I put something out on Instagram
asking people what their 10 K personal best was
and there's some damn fast times out there,
which then got me thinking, what is the average
five K and 10 K time, which I found,
and that also got me thinking then,
what is a good five K and 10 K time, which I found.
We'll get to that right after I do this track workout.
How about we pause and comment below
if you think I'm gonna throw up or not?
Winner gets a high five.
(upbeat music)
Whoa, whoa, that was, you're not gonna be impressed
by the average pace, but it was 10 minutes, just easy jog,
10 minutes of warmup drills, and then some strides,
and then the plan is to do 10 times 400 meter repeats
at just better than a five K pace,
so that was 400 meters in at or under a minute 30,
and if I missed two in a row, I'd stop, and I got to nine.
Better than I thought I would do first fast run day back,
but I had a pace bike for the last one helping me.
Alright, let's go talk about what a good
five and 10 K running time is.
(groaning)
That hurt just about exactly as much as I expected it to.
Good old track workouts.
Alright, so, a good five K and 10 K running time,
it's all relative, if you talk to Lionel Sanders,
I think he's doing something like a 14:30
or got down to a 14:15 back in the day.
The eye to you guys that are doing that in a race,
you talk to me, I think I was a 19:09
on a track in my personal best.
Some people would be 35, 40 minutes,
but we've gotta put some parameters on what good means.
I didn't need that second air quote,
that's the track brain talking.
Fortunately, we've got some parameters.
USA Running did a study back in 2014
and looked at the average times for all runners.
Males age 33.6 years old had a median running time,
that is like the very middle running time,
not the fastest, not the slowest,
right in the middle, of 28:46.
Females age 33 years old were 34:53.
10 K running times was a male
age 38.4 years old in 56 minutes
and the female was 35.7 years old
in one hour, four minutes, and 47 seconds,
but that's the median time
and that skews a little bit higher.
Friend of mine, Jacques, who you might know
if you've been around for a little over a year,
he's the other person that completed
the 37 kilometer marathon swim with me.
I'll link to that at the end of the video.
He's an investigative journalist, and he was also
a former elite under 23 triathlete,
so for fun one year, he did an analysis
of all of the marathons and half marathons
locally here over the last 40 years,
and what he saw is that there is this
big influx of really casual runners,
people who wouldn't consider themselves runners.
These are the family fun five K and the charity 10 K's,
so we gotta take, I would say probably 20 percent
of that entire population out and say that
those average times probably skew a little big higher.
Then, in addition to that, we've also gotta say
that we're not looking for an average time,
we're looking for a good time.
I'm big on these today.
And to give a metric for what a good time will be
is we will say the top third of a local race,
and for this, what we can use is an age graded calculator,
which takes a bunch of data and says,
"Alright, based on average ages, average times,
where do you need to be to be in a certain percentile?"
And at 70th percentile, you are one
of the top of the heap in a regional competition.
You are potentially coming close to like,
top five percent here locally in our running races
or wherever you are, so based on
those age graded calculators, what we're looking for
is the top third of that, somewhere around
the 50th percentile, and for that,
we get numbers that for a 35 year old
five K running male, 26:35 is our good time.
For a female, you add about a minute 30.
For a 35 year old 10 K male runner, that number is 55:02.
For a female, add about three 15.
So those are good times, 10 K, 25:35, five K, 55:02.
Now, if this seems completely out of touch for you,
I would actually say that it's completely achievable,
because before I even started doing research,
I thought to myself, "What is a good time?"
And I think more along the lines of,
what is an achievable pace for most people?
And let's assume they have no functional deficiencies,
like no back problems, nothing that is
holding you back mechanically.
I think that something called MFP running,
that is minimum functional pace running,
that is the slowest possible time that you can run
at a very comfortable pace, and for most people,
when you start getting good form,
you're leaning forward, you're nice and upright,
you're not slouching, you're not crashing down
on either one side, collapsing one way or the other,
somewhere around five 30 per kilometer
is a very achievable minimum functional pace.
Multiply that by five K running race,
we're talking somewhere around 27:30,
do that for a 10 K running race,
we're talking about 55 minutes.
Basically, right around where it ended up being.
Now, again, this is relative, this is for a 35 year old.
It starts getting a little bit slower as you get older,
and it's a little bit slower for females, some females.
A lot of the females I run with run faster than me,
kind of cool.
Now, if you can't run this fast,
there are three things that I suggest that you do.
Number one is watch a video, that I will link to
in the description below, about good running form.
Watch a playlist that I will link to at the end
of this video and will be in the description below
about how to run well just with three runs a week.
And the biggest thing that you've gotta do
is you've gotta do over distance runs
so that you can keep up a good pace
over the course of a five or a 10 K race.
This means you're working your way up
to an eight K continuous run for a five K,
or a 15 K continuous run for a 10 K,
and you have to do another run that is focused on speed.
So that's similar to what I did today
where you're going well over your target speed
so that your legs learn how to turn over quickly
and your heart gets up to that really heavy beating pace
and it realizes, "Hey, I didn't die last time this happened.
Probably not gonna die this time it happens."
And I can almost guarantee that you can become
a good runner and well beat that 25:32 and that 55:02
and then walk around and be like,
"Triathlon Taren says I'm a good runner."
Actually, don't say that, nobody's gonna care.
Nobody knows me.
And there will be links in the description below
to the USA Running study about that median pace,
and that actually goes up to half marathon and full marathon
so if that interests you,
and an age graded running calculator.
Just a wealth of info for ya.
So now, between all those things,
you've got links here for a marathon swim,
links here for a playlist.
Alright, Trainiacs, if you aren't yet subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
If you are subscribed, wish me luck,
'cause I don't feel good, I feel woozy.
Thank you.