Running a 5K Race and Finding your 5K Race Results.

Every race will have its results – those who won, those who did well and those who, literally, also ran. Knowing and appreciating the results the 5k races you take part in is important, not because you want to work up to a world record or even want to compete with the professional runner, but simply to know how your level of fitness and running abilities compares with others in your age group and of you fitness level.

A top level high school athlete will run the 5k in about 15 minutes. The best of college runners and professional will run the distance in around 13 plus minutes. A fit 35 year old should be able to do the race in between 35 to 40 minutes. A 75 year old woman may take about a minute for every year of her age – 1 hour and 15 minutes plus. And all of them are doing times that they should be proud of. So you see, there is a huge variation in the times that can be achieved in a 5k race. It depends on your age, fitness level, how much you run on a regular basis and your motivation.

As an amateur runner you should look at your race results in the context of your personal performance, and not in relation to what others are achieving. What is important is how good you feel after running 5k. Tired but also exhilarated? Do you feel like have pushed yourself as hard as you should, with no energy reserves left at the end of the 5k, but at the same time with a high that makes you wish you could do more? If the answers are yes, then your have achieved a good 5k result.

Of course, a race is not like training. Here you are not running in isolation and there are other runners whose performance you can use to benchmark your own.  But the problem is how to decide on the benchmarks based on the 5k results. For example if you area 35 year old female and the top amateur runner of your age group ran it in 28 minutes while you took 43, should you be dejected at your 5k result? Does it mean that your physical condition is below average and you need to do something about it? Should you up your training and practice to try and reach that level? Not necessarily. Age is not the only grounds for comparison. Perhaps the lady who ran the 28 minutes is not working and has more time to practice. Maybe she is able to spend money on getting professional training. Her motivation may be to do a sub 25 minute 5k race. You may have limited time for practice, may not feel that need to spend money on a trainer and have no such ambitions to go below 25 minutes. The comparison is unfair. When benchmarking your race results, find out more about the people whom you are comparing your performance against. If you find that your timings are comparable to people of your age group, who run under similar circumstances and have the same motivation as you – exercise and fun – then you are getting good 5k results.