Pete Magill - Fast 5K

Praise for Fast 5K and Pete Magill

Pete Magills running career has shown hes the master of the 5K. This guide-book proves that hes also the best at teaching others how to improve their 5K performance. Do what Pete says, and youre sure to run stronger, healthier, and faster.

AMBY BURFOOT, 1968 Boston Marathon winner and author of Run Forever and The Runners Guide to the Meaning of Life

If you want to run a faster 5K but dont know where to start, Pete Magill has done the research so you dont have to. In Fast 5K, he combines years of experience as a coach and competitor with the latest science to help you get the most out of your training. Hes truly a 5K runners best friend.

CLAUDETTE GROENENDAAL, USA National Champion, NCAA Champion, former NCAA Womens national record holder for 800 meters

Ive said it before, and Im saying it again: If you want to run faster, do what Pete Magill says. Its that simple.

SCOTT DOUGLAS, Runners World contributing writer and author of Advanced Marathoning and The Athletes Guide to CBD

Petes latest marvel of scholarship is a hoot to read and a treasure to follow. Pete explodes all ignorance while sharing the most intelligent steps to 5K excellence.

KEN STONE, founder and editor of Masterstrack.blog, contributing editor for Times of San Diego

Pete Magills Fast 5K is like having a personal coach at your fingertips. His easy-to-digest keys break down the components of 5K training in a way that will benefit runners of all abilities. Youll want to read this book before you start training for your next 5Kor you might get beat by someone who did.

SEAN WADE, Olympic marathoner, masters world record holder, and founder of the Kenyan Way

Pete Magill is the Mr. Miyagi of running. He will build you up comprehensively for a lifetime of happy running, and you wont even have to paint his fence or wax his car.

JAY DUPLASS, American film director, author, and actor

This thorough book covers all aspects of training and racing the 5K, yet reads with an easy familiarity, based on Magills experience as a runner, coach, and student of the sport. Magill knows what you need to do to improve and where youre likely to make mistakes. Anyone who reads and follows this book will undoubtably become a better runner and likely end up with a 5K PR.

JONATHAN BEVERLY, editor-in-chief of PodiumRunner, and author of Run Strong, Stay Hungry and Your Best Stride

Whether youre just starting out as a runner or starting afresh, you can do no better than heed the guidance of runnings ultimate comeback kid, Pete Magill.

MATT FITZGERALD, author of How Bad Do You Want It? and Racing Weight

Pete Magill must have found the fountain of youth. I coach college students, and he consistently outruns half my team! He must know something the rest of us dont!

STEVE SCOTT, head track coach at Cal State San Marcos, 3-time Olympian, former American record holder in the mile

Copyright 2019 by Pete Magill

Originally published in 2017 as Pete Magills 25 Keys to Running a Faster 5K by Pete Magill.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by VeloPress, a division of Pocket Outdoor Media.

4745 Walnut Street, Unit A

Boulder, CO 80301-2587

VeloPress is the leading publisher of books on endurance sports and is a division of Pocket Outdoor Media. Focused on cycling, triathlon, running, swimming, and nutrition/diet, VeloPress books help athletes achieve their goals of going faster and farther. Preview books and contact us at velopress.com.

Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services

A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-937715-92-2 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-948006-09-5 (ebook)

Art direction by Vicki Hopewell

Design by Graham Smith

Composition by Anita Koury

v. 3.1

Contents

A note to readers: Double-tap on illustrations to enlarge them. After art is selected, you may expand or pinch your fingers to zoom in and out.

So you want to run a fast 5K.

But youre not sure how to train for itor, once trained, how to execute the perfect race.

Relax. Youre not alone. Every year, between nine and ten million Americans run a 5K race. Some are happy just to finish. But others, like you, want more.

You want to run faster. Faster than youve run recently, faster than you have in your current age group, or maybe faster than ever before.

And you suspect that if you could gain access to the training and racing secrets that allow elite runners to log stellar race after stellar race, you, too, could unlock the magic of your own 5K performance.

The good news is that youre right: There are training, lifestyle, and race adjustments that will make you a better and faster 5K runner.

The bad news is that there is no magic bulletno single adjustment that on its own will net you the performance youre after.

Theres a Bateke proverb that goes like this: The river swells with the contribution of the small streams. Youll need to create your own river by embracing a wide variety of key practices. Thats because the 5K is a unique race that pairs the speed of a miler with the endurance of a marathoner. Only a multifaceted approachone that targets both speed and endurance fitnesswill yield your faster 5K.

Sound like a lot to put on your plate?

Again, relax. Training for a faster 5K has more to do with variety, fun, and self-confidence than it does with pain, discipline, and sacrifice. The trick is making sure that your training and lifestyle adjustments provide the keys for unlocking your 5K potential. Thats what this book is all about.

On the surface, this key seems simple: Set a 5K performance goal that is manageable.

Yet this is where many runners make their first mistake.

A 25-minute 5K runner sets a goal of 22 minutes. Or an 18:30 runner targets 16:45. Or another runner wants to somehow get faster in the four weeks before a local 5K.

All these runners have one thing in common: Theyre setting a benchmark for success that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve within a reasonable training time frame. Often, the result will be a negative 5K race experience.

A smarter performance goal is this: Run faster for your next 5K than you did for your last one, and then continue to improve after that. At this stage, dont target an actual time; instead, be satisfied with improved fitness and whatever time improvement that fitness yields. (You can target a specific time in .)

This isnt about embracing a Zen approach to the sport. Its about recognizing two important concepts that guide successful 5K training programs:

Improvement is always incremental (and occurs at different rates for different runners), making it counterproductive to train harder than necessary to achieve incremental gains in performance.

Targeting a performance that cant be achieved at your next 5K robs you of the positive feedback youll experience from targeting a more modest performance goal thats within reach. Dont create a negative environment in which smaller, incremental improvements are viewed as undeserving of celebrationor, worse yet, as failures.