garritat, chrisnerb and all; I would highly recommend that you make these 5 changes::

1. Do a substantially longer warmup of about 3 miles before you start your intervals
2. Run the intervals at no faster that than 5:56 per mile, which is the pace of your most recent 5k. Even 6:05-6:10 would be fine. Adjust workout pace accordingly after you run a faster race, even though you might feel that you are faster than last race already.
3. Take only a 200-meter jog between each rep.
4. Aftter your last mile, jog 400 and then do 3-4 x 200 at perceived mile-3k race pace. Take a 200 jog between each.
5. Cooldown for 2 miles.

The longer warmup and cool downs alone will give a big boost to your endurance, as will the shorter recovery jogs. It might seem like just padding your workout with junk miles, but beleive me they make a postive difference. You do not need to do your intervals at faster than race pace to improve big time. Those few 200's at the end will give you all the speed you need. If it can work for an old man like me, it can certainly work for you young studs

Chrisnerb,

Before I give my 2 cents on your questions, what I really zeroed in on when I jumped in here was the speed of garritat's intervals and short warm up. Those were the 2 items that I had the strongest opinions on. I don't care for the short warm up or doing the mile reps so fast. Otherwise the general approach looks pretty good. I also thought MichganFlyer's contribution was good. I certainly can't fault anyone for following one of Jack Daniels' schedules.

Now that I've qualified my answer with that, here is my thinking--maybe too late if you've already done it--but in your case I would wait on the 200's for a while and start with longer intervals of 1k-1600 at no faster than current 5k pace plus 10-12 seconds. Three miles of fast running should be enough, but do the longish warm up and cool down. You could do a few strides during your easy runs to work on turnover, e.g. 6 x 100 at 1-mile race effort-fast, relaxed, but not sprinting. The plan you've been on by gradually adding days, increasing mileage, working in some tempo runs, and going easy on your easy days looks very sound. The transition from there into more threshold type intervals rather the harder stuff seems like a reasonable next step.

As far as racing "almost weekly" and working in a track workout, plus long run, you have to be very careful. However, I'd be a big hypocrite if I told you not to try it. I race quite often, but I do have to make adjustments, especially when I do them on consecutive weekends. To do all 3 week after week is asking for trouble, imo. Here are some ways that I handle it:

• Before a Saturday race, modify the mid-week track workout by doing fewer reps and taking a longer recovery jog. For example, 4 x 1k at 10k pace with 400-meter recovery jog.
• Do your long run the day after a shorter race, but make it easy. If you feel good you can pick it up for the last couple miles. If the race is 10k or longer do a longish cool down and make that your long run for the week.
• Sunday races create more of a problem since it is not a good idea to do long run the day before, even though doing one the day after often works out fine. Usually I will move the long run to mid week in this case and skip the track workout. The long one is highest priority for me.

These are just a few ideas, and a good illustration of why frequent racing can be disruptive to our training. Although it can be a great rush it's not wise to try and do it week after week year around-sometimes easier said than done for some of us. If we don't ease off and go back to base periodically, improvement becomes tougher and tougher to come by, and even regression is possible.

No suggestions on transition from treadmill to roads other than remembering to go easy on your easy days like you have been.

Good luck. Let us know how your races go.

Hi Chris,,

Saw you on here and wanted to congratulate you. I saw you won a 5k! Good job! Here is my advice since I know you. Keep increasing your mileage and work on your stride. Whatever is funky with your hip is going to injure or slow you down now or someday in the future, but you have been running well since the winter and I have not so why should You listen to advice from me? Check out my blog. I think I told you about it a few weeks ago.

http://recoveryourstride.blogspot.com/

Also you should go under 18 at this racenext month http://www.coolrunning.com/major/08/applecountryfast5k/

Jim H

http://recoveryourstride.blogspot.com/

The way you are training is good for 5k I think. But if your volume gets really low you might have problems. I've been threw this 100 times. If your going for a 5k you need lower miles than if your were going for a half marathon or marathon(obviously) and just do a **** load of intervals and fast runs. You need off days of 1 day usually sometimes 2 or even 3 (rarely) after your hardest runs. I am about the same speed as you but i had bad days on the few chances i had to break a 5k 18 last year. One time the hills were just to much for me to do it. The other time I dropped my volume and that affected how much energy I had in the race during the second mile espically. Also i realized that intervals only get you so far because of the recovery compared to a actual race. You need like crazy as **** fast 2 mile runs and **** like that. Even 4 mile runs at slighty slower than race pace. I can't say exactly what it best. That jack daniel **** is for people that dont know anything about running. It cannot predict how your body responds and recovers from workouts. It is just a guide for people that don't know anything. Can you do like a 5:10 mile? 5:14 you should be able to do to get a 18 minute 5k. 5:39's miles are good exercise but thats no where near the intensity of a 5:48 pace for 3 miles.

That's some improvement! Congratulations!

I hit 18:15 this past weekend on tired legs with no taper/rest before. The course was less than ideal (inclines, lots of turns around a sub-division). I'm no speed merchant but think a sub-18 is doable on the right course.