Benchmark 5K time trial benchmark

Fitness check — gates the plan

Time~40m

Distance7.5 km

DifficultyHard

Target: ≤ 22:30

Route: Run quality sessions on the FLATTEST route you have. Your routes now average ~14 m of climb per km — nearly three times your historical average — and goal pace on that terrain is a different, much harder session than the one written.

Calibrated by your 5K best effort (23:55 on 08-27, measured by Strava): threshold 5:03–5:15 · 1K reps 4:40–4:50 · 400s 4:22–4:35 /km — trust these over the printed bands.

Ground you knowwithin reach of 7.5 km

7.2 km · hilly, 17 m/km

steepest descent −10 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:52/km

7.1 km · hilly, 17 m/km

steepest descent −28 m in km 6 · run once · best 5:42/km

7.1 km · hilly, 18 m/km

steepest descent −34 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:09/km

8.0 km · rolling, 12 m/km

steepest descent −10 m in km 1 · run once · best 5:46/km

Instructions

Warm-up

11.5 km easy warm-up + 4 strides6:10–6:45 /km

Read

2Same course every benchmark, as flat as you can find — ideally a track or a measured 5 km. GPS over-reads your distance by ~2%, so a watch-measured 5 km is really ~4.9 km; repeating one known course is what makes these times comparable to each other and to the goal.

Work

35 km time trial — even splits, no fast first km

Read

4≤ 22:30 → attempt sub-45 in week 16 with confidence. Slower → run the attempt at 4:35/km and finish strong instead.

Cooldown

51 km easy cool-down6:15–6:50 /km