One more conceptual frame before we look at specific workouts to get faster: As Pete Magill, the oldest American to break 15:00 for 5K, puts it, there are no great workouts, just great training. Magill means that training is a series of puzzle pieces that link one day’s, one week’s, one month’s efforts to the next. You advance your fitness by gradually building and working steadily toward your goal. Some days that might mean a hard workout, but some days that will mean running very easily to recover from one hard run and prepare for the next.
That’s a different, more mature mind-set than the one that says, “I need to go to the track today and run as fast and far as I can to prepare for next week’s race.” Hard workouts at race pace or faster are necessary to run your best, but they’re just one of many building blocks. Focusing on them too much, both physically and mentally, means never reaching your potential.