The 5000-Meters is a long-distance track running event in which the athlete has to run the 400m lap 12.5 times and it therefore is also a classic long-distance race. In road racing, the same distance is called “5K” or “5km” which makes it possible to distinguish between the two. It is also similar to an event held at the Ancient Olympic Games which was called “dolichos race”. It was introduced in 820 BCE and the length was approximately 4800 meters, whereas the difference was that the race began and ended in the stadium but in between ran through the Olympic grounds. To the modern Olympic Games it has been introduced in 1912 for men and for women in 1996 as it replaced the 3000 meters.

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How to 5000 Meters

The first meters are crucial for the upcoming course of the race. You should start with a quick thrust forward in order to get a favorable position. After that you should try to get in a good and constant flow in which you conserve energy and where you avoid getting blocked off by other competitors. Here is where it gets hard: you will feel the body having less and less energy and you have to use your mental strength in order to surpass the thought of getting slower. Coming to the last lap, you have to use all of your stored up energy in order to make the final sprint. Usually, the last lap is the fastest where athletes give all what they have.

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If you are planning to take part in a 5000m race you should start to prepare at least two months earlier. Here you could train three to four times a week and include a great variety of training sessions as the 5000 meters require a mix of multiple attributes: Intervals, long runs, tempo runs, sprints. You would also need of course strength training sessions, rest days in between to prevent injury and a healthy diet to make sure your body is supplied with appropriate energy. Also don’t forget to keep a positive mindset as it could decide your Race!
Top Athletes
Looking at the previous 5000 meters performances, Finland brought up the most Olympic champions (6) in men while today East African countries dominate this discipline. Hannes Kolehmainen, who was also Finnish, achieved the first official record with a time of 14:36.6 in July 1912 and the following 30 years only Finnish athletes were able to break it. 2020, the current record has been established: 12:35.36 by Joshua Cheptegei from Uganda. Impressively, since the first record until today, the time has improved more than 2 minutes! Looking at the women, Ethiopian athlete Gudaf Tsegay holds the world record with a time of 14:00.21 in September 2023, which is also more than a minute longer than the first world record ( 15:41.51) in 1981. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Jakob Ingebrigsten (NOR) won the 5000 meters finals with a time of 13:13.66.

5000 Metres (worldathletics.org)

5000 metres – Wikipedia