‹ Week 5
5K time trial — skip, 23:53 already banked benchmark
Kept for completeness only. A time trial nine days after a race, on the first football week, buys nothing.
Time~40m
Distance7.5 km
DifficultyHard
Target: skip — the 2026-08-27 race cleared this bar; next test is the week-8 10K
OPTIONAL as of 2026-08-27. The Fossvogshlaup 5K on 27 August came in at 23:53 chip (4:46/km, avg HR 171, max 182), which clears this week's 24:30 bar two weeks early — so a second maximal 5K here buys a number you already have and costs a hard session. Run it only if you want a controlled comparison on a known course; otherwise take the session below and keep the race as the week-5 result.
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.
Ground you know
7.2 km · hilly, 17 m/kmsteepest descent −10 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:52/km
7.1 km · hilly, 17 m/kmsteepest descent −28 m in km 6 · run once · best 5:42/km
7.1 km · hilly, 18 m/kmsteepest descent −34 m in km 2 · run once · best 6:09/km
8.0 km · rolling, 12 m/kmsteepest 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≤ 24:30 → on track. 24:30–25:30 → fine, carry on. Slower → repeat weeks 3–4 before moving to the threshold phase.
Cooldown
51 km easy cool-down6:15–6:50 /km