Forgot to post workout the other day. I lifted first and ran second, with the result that my run totally sucked and was just a mile long.

Squats
1x5x45
1x5x135
1x5x185
2x5x195

Chins (getting better on ROM, about 80%)

1x13, 1x9, 1x6 (epic fail on 6th rep, tho)

OHP

3x8x80

Oh yeah, did 3x100 reps on the jump rope too.

Today I did 3.5 miles outside in the rain. I started on the slower side but picked up the pace a lot, probably running low to mid 7 minute miles on the way back.

Ugh, had a lazy weekend with too much drinking and staying out late. Out drinking beer with potential bandmates Friday night until midnight; hit the casino Saturday and donked around at live 3/6 until 3am. Did not exercise.

Yesterday I made it to the gym but had a pounding headache from a dental appointment earlier and didn't feel like running.

Squat

1x5x45
1x5x135
1x5x185
2x5x200

Maybe I should have taken it easy and stuck with 185 after so many days off, but w/e I went for it. Not the best set of squats I've ever done but I held the form together reasonably well.

Chins - tried to increase the ROM even more which resulted in fewer reps. Abs falling apart way before biceps.

1x9
1x7
1x6

OHP - Went with seated dumbbells instead of standing with a bar.

3x5x42.5 per hand.j

3x100 jump rope.

No running Hopefully today.

Hit the gym and did this workout again last night:

.25 warm up
.25 @ 6:31/mile
.25 recovery (9:30/mile pace)
.25 @ 6:31/mile
.25 recovery
.25 @ 6:31/mile
.25 recovery
.25 @ 6:00/mile
.25 recovery

After several days off running, and lighter mileage in general over the past two weeks, it was fairly challenging.

Then lifted:

Squat - Decided to stick with 200 just to make sure I was getting good depth and decent form before moving to 205. It's decent. I can't say that it's 100% parallel, but it's close.

1x5x45
1x5x135
1x5x185
2x5x200

Chins - really working toward doing each chin from a dead hang. These were probably 90% ROM.

1x11
1x8
1x6

Seated OHP

3x5x45 (per hand)

Pretty easy 2-mile run today. Legs were aching from yesterday's workout for the first 1/4 mile or so, then felt better.

Lifted on Sunday but my right calf was insanely sore for some reason so I only did light squats in addition to chins, ohp, etc. Yesterday I did the same 2 mile intervsl run that has become a favorite and lifted.

In focusing on squat depth I found myself barely able to reach parallel at 185 so I reset to 155 for now. Also did chins, ohp (52.5 per hand) and whatever the exercise is called where you put one knee on a bench, pick up a dumbbell and pull it straight up, bending your elbow. Kind of like a dumbbell row, I guess. Maybe that's what its called. I used a 55lb dumbbell.

Rejoined the gym here at work today so I can hoop and lift at lunch rather than scramble after work. Ofc nobody showed up to bball, and I had brought my bball shoes, so I couldn't do much but shoot and lift. Running treadmill in my bball shoes is horrible.

Still sucking horribly at squats and feeling a lot of tightness and soreness. Also noticed my vert was pretty weak when I was shooting around. Should I focus on more explosive squats to help with vert? I think last time I did a log someone recommended doing like a quarter squat with a pause and explosive follow through. I used to do this with 135 and could jump several inches off the ground for like 10 reps.

Other than frustrations with squats and not getting much running volume in, I am noticing some sexy results in the upper body and arms. Chins are helping my abs and my biceps are getting bigger and veinier. Still could stand to get leaner obv.

Check out Vertical Jump Bible to increase your vert. From what I was looking at, it really depends on your current state to determine what kind of workout would best serve you.

Your warmup is WAY too short, that should be at least a mile. You are starting in on your first repeat after 2 minutes of running? That can get you hurt, really fast.

I glanced through your workout regimen, and I honestly dont think you have enough of a base yet for speedwork for a 5k. I would suggest aerobic threshold workouts (800m+ reps at 80% of your max heartrate) or tempo runs (5-10 minutes of hard running, but not sprinting) until you have more of a base. Repeat 400s wont do much of anything for a 5k - 400s are anaerobic, and you wont do too much anaerobic running (hopefully) until your kick. A faster kick will knock a few seconds off your time, but a higher AT capacity will drop minutes off of it.

The ****ty vert is more than likely just due to accumulated fatigue, not an actual loss of ability.

I don't know how to precisely define when an exercise becomes anaerobic, but a 400 at a 6:30 pace is not anywhere near the top of my capability, considering I can run a full mile in close to 6 flat. I definitely feel warm enough after a few minutes to run a 97 second quarter without hurting myself. I expect that my fastest quarter at this point would be around 70 seconds, +/- 2 seconds.

This much may be true. But also it's not like running 5ks is my job. I just kind of selected the distance as an arbitrary measurement of overall running fitness. Yeah, I want to lower my time, but my real goal is just to be healthier, faster and sexier. Lately I haven't had time to get many longer runs in so I've been doing the intervals as a way to get a decently intense workout done in a short time.

This is a good point. I also wasn't really trying to max out my vert or anything, I just felt weak and fatigued when I casually jumped to grab a rebound or shoot a layup.

SC,
There is no way you are warmed up enough after only a quarter mile of running to be going at 85 to 90%. Any running book, training plan, or even a magazine would tell you that you need to work out for at least 10 minutes to be ready for that. If you dont believe me, just look up some external source, and see if you can find something that lets you do sprints after 2 mins of warmup. Your legs are just like any other muscles in your body, and good weightlifters dont start doing their heavy set after 2 mins in the gym.

You are not necessarily going to notice the difference, especially if you are relatively new to running (except you will probably just feel more tired for the workout, and resent the fact that you did the longer warmup in the first place). The thing with running is that if you dont do this injury prevention and do all the little things right, you wont notice a problem until something gets pulled, torn, or damaged to the point where you have to stop running for 6-12 weeks. If your goals are to get healthier, faster and sexier, then ALL of those require that you dont hurt yourself. An optimal workout plan will also let you meet all of these goals faster. 400s are not your friend.

Also, how fast you are running quarters has almost 0 relation to how fast you will run your 5k, so it really is no measure of your fitness at the moment. The captain of my cross country team in college could run under 30 mins for a 10k, but he could not break 60 seconds in the 400. If you dont have the time to do a long workout, do a 10 minute warmup, a 5-10 minute tempo run (go at like 75% pace, push but dont kill yourself), a 10 minute cooldown + obviously standard stretching. You will see much bigger gains with that kind of training.

A good way to think about these things is in terms of 'race pace.' If you were training for a mile, these would be pretty damn near race pace. Unless you think you are going to break 20:00 in a 5k sometime soon, these are faster than race pace. I hope you wouldnt feel good about starting a 5k race on 2 minutes of warmup.

As a strict definition, anything that is over 65% of your maximum heart rate is when you begin to go anaerobic, so wear a heartrate monitor, or stop and check your pulse if you ever want to know.

Sorry to be a nit, but again, a 97 second quarter is just nowhere close to 85 or 90% effort for me. It is not a sprint. 70 seconds would be close to max effort for a quarter (I did break 60 in high school), but even that is nowhere near my top sprint speed, which is closer to a 12 second 100 meters.

I'm sure your advice is sound, as far as the workout advice goes, but the 85-90% effort figure you keep quoting is wrong.

That makes no sense. If I told you to do a 400 at 100%, you'd run it as fast as possible. The fact that you run a 100 in 12 seconds is irrelevant - all that matters is how fast you run a 400 when you are trying to get the fastest possible time. By your standard, you weren't going 100% at any point in a 400 unless you ran 48 seconds for the 400, even though your PR is likely around 50% longer than that. 100% for you (race pace) in a 400 is 70ish seconds right now, and if you were to run at 80% of that pace, you would run a quarter in 87.5 seconds, in which you are probably at 90-95% of your max heartrate. So, it just depends on what way you want to quantify your intensity. If you want to use some stupid scale that makes you think that your top foot speed = 100%, then sure, we're all lazy f***s and under-performing in every workout.

I'll leave you alone though, because you dont seem to want the advice. If you took anything from what I said, just try not to get hurt. The best thing you can do for yourself as a runner is to stay injury free, just as the best thing a poker player can do to improve as a player is to avoid going busto and stay in action. I hope you achieve all of your goals.

I appreciate the advice, I'm just being nitty about the perceived intensity on those 400 intervals. I'm just not going to get hurt running a 100 second lap after minimal warmup.

Further, I'd like to try your workout - 10 min warmup, 5-10 mins at 75% and 10 mins cooldown. What pace should 75% be for me given a current 5k pr of around 22:30?

75% of your max heartrate would be perfect, so just wear a heartrate monitor.

Uh, I don't have one, but about half the time the heartrate function on the treadmill works.

What is my max heartrate? The 220 minus age formula yields 188, but 75% of that is 141, which I think is slower than my heart runs while I'm warming up.

Before I read your latest post I went to the gym and did 10 mins at a 9:40 mile pace, then then 5 mins at a 7:18 pace, with another 5 mins at 9:40 to cool down. According to the treadmill my heartrate was 175 during the fast part. Not sure how accurate that is.... since according to the formula it's 93% max heartrate!

That sounds a bit high, I'd drop it down to 7:30-7:40 pace and go for a little bit longer (like 8-10), but the workout you did sounds pretty solid to me on the whole. I've read those formulas too, but I think max heartrate varies a little bit from person to person, as does how high your heartrate will be for various workouts. I've read that 65% of max heartrate is the point where you transition from purely aerobic to partly anaerobic, but I've done long runs at 65-70% of my max heartrate and gone for well over an hour for some reason, while I have friends that were slower than me and their heartrates were lower. Other things can affect your resting and working heartrate on a day-to-day basis (amount of sleep, overtraining, getting sick, etc), so its not an exact science. It's easy to get the numbers and make the calculations, but it's also probably good to do some judgment calls and adjust it to fit your body. From what it sounds like, you may be running a little too fast for your warmup too, but if you could have a conversation easily then you're probably staying mostly aerobic and it's fine.

oh, one other thing to note - the treadmill ones can be fairly inaccurate, and I've found them to be off by as much as 5% when I was wearing a legit heartrate monitor and tested them.

Yeah, I suspect this one is a tad high. It's also a different brand of treadmill than the ones they have at 24 hour fitness (where I usually run). I was working out at my office gym today.

Played somewhat competitive 5 on 5 bball today on a short court. I gave myself about a dozen new blisters, but played pretty well.

Eventually we dropped to 3 on 3 and my legs sort of went out of my shot, but up until then I was on point.

Didn't have time to lift... hopefully later today.

Was hoping to play bball again today but my schedule didn't permit it. Instead I tried a variant of jaglawson's workout again -- 10 minutes at 9:40 pace, a ~7:10 mile or so, then 5 minutes at 9:40 to cool down.

I used a different machine today and my heartrate was at 170 or lower during the 7:10 mile, so I'm thinking the other machine was off. It was a nice workout, mildly challenging but not really that hard. Then I did chins and a little bit of standing OHP.

awesome, glad it worked out, and that heartrate makes more sense. It's supposed to feel somewhat challenging, but not a killer workout by any means. I'd suggest keeping the tempo workouts to a max of 1 per week, and focus mostly on putting in longer steady runs if you have the time.