My goal of sub 4:00 1500-I will not stop until I reach my goal.

17 years old? wrote:

17+10= A 27 year old man.

indeed. but even with that fancy formula i'm still 17...

had a second healthy day of running today.

14 miles:

a.m. 10M-t/f track, 3x200-35ish,37,38 (100 rest) for warmup; 400-72-800-2:34-2x1200-4:09,4:10-800-2:43-400-76. 200 rest except 400m rest after the 1200's. supposed to be 5k pace except for 3k pace for last two, but essentially had 2 at 3k pace or better, 1 at 5k pace and three closer to 10k pace.

again a headwind but could wear shorts. totally died after first 800, but overall this was actually my fastest workout up here at altitude. 1200's were 10-15 seconds slower than back in new york in the fall.

p.m.-4 burrito run. very, very slow. stiff.

no achilles problems so far and talked to a coach and got permission to run some workouts with their college track team, so that should help me get some higher quality work.

Yay race pace workouts.

2 mi warmup, 15 mins

12x400, split into two sets: first 6 you get 90 seconds rest, second 6 two minutes.

Ran: 67 64 65 67 66 66

then 65 65 64 64 64 65

decently solid. i might have been able to do a bit better, but i'm still sore from sunday - plus i ended up doing my long run yesterday.

look man. im not trying to be a jerk...but you are never going to reach that goal...ive seen you run and you suck...try tennis...

17 years old? wrote:

17+10= A 27 year old man.

Jonesy-that workout sounds pretty tough. 200m isn't a long time to recover, and at altitude i'm sure you hardly recover at all. good job

boingo-good workout, i wish i had that kind of speed right now

This is not a high school workout program you are doing.

Shhhh. This is the thread of brotherly 1500 love. There will be no hatin' done in this thread.

solo joe, tx for the good word. excellent 1k w/o.

boingo, outstanding 12x4 w/o after a tough weekend of racing.

not sure if your coach should have you racing two one miles and a 5k in a two day period in winter, plus travelling all that. hope you stay healthy. you're obviously very close to the 3:59 1500m. you'll probably hit 4:02-3 fresh out of the gate in march on your spring break track trip, if you have one of those.

wednesday: 12.5--on dirt. out in 7:30 pace, back in 6:55 pace.

was very easy and still a bit cautious about the achilles, which has held up fine with the exercises. calf soreness is gone.

thursday: 12-very slow w/a group, except for 2x.83M in very easy 5:12 and harder 4:34.

tomorrow, will get destroyed in a tempo run by college runners, if I go to the right place. hopefully this will help me step it up. I figure that I'm in 16:20 shape now, which is Daniels VDot 62.9>threshold (tempo) 5:41. would be good to be able to do that at this altitude.

Thanks jonesy. Hope your tempo went well today. Did one myself that didn't feel too bad - 5 mi in 30:00 sliding down from 6:20 to 5:50 pace.

How long does daniels prescribe tempo runs to be? I doubt I could handle that at the moment with any sort of ease (if going for 30 mins), and I think my VDOT should be something like 68 or so based on race results.

I think the multiple races was in an effort to simulate what I've got coming up: ECACs. Our team lacks depth, to say the least, so I'm on the 4x8 & DMR teams as well as probably running the open mile there. To illustrate: our fifth-best 800 man has run 2:05 so far this season, and our next best mile guy not on the DMR squad already probably can't go under 4:30 right now.

Finally had a solid race. I broke my 3k pr tonight, with a 9:09. Off the top of my head, i think splits were 71, 73, 72, 74, 73, 77, 75, 34

great job, solo joe!

boingo, the vdot for 4:20 mile was 68.9 or 69.8, one of those (equivalent to a 14:57 5k and low 31 10k), but anyway the training pace, from the calculator in the good threads thread, was 6:16/mile for easy or long runs, 5:14 for threshold (tempo) runs, 71.6/400m for cruise intervals and 65.6/400m for speed. this thread discusses the length of tempo runs:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=248888&thread=248888

tinman breaks them into three groups, something like 20-40min, 40-60, 60-80min. he wants a 16 5k runner doing a number of different paces accordingly.

friday: 14 miles-3 in the morning easy, 11 in the afternoon with 4.1M tempo-23:49 (5:50/mile). 6:11, 3:12 (first 1.5M into a fierce headwind); then got some benefit from tailwind or still air after the turnaround; 2:58 (12:21 2 mile (=6:10)), 5:21 (17:42), 5:37; :30 (.1M). Last 5k in 17:38.

jogged 1.5M then decided to do another mile-5:38.

unfortunately was a bit late and didn't see the (highly punctual) track team, so had to run solo. but relatively pleased. after the first two miles, decent quality and the fastest miles and tempo that I've done up here in albuquerque.

tinman had the 5k 16min runner doing 5:33 (20-30 min tempo), 5:44 (40-60 min), 5:56 MP (70-80 min.), 6:53(?) easy/long.

he recommended two to three tempos at varying lengths per week! (there were some long interval workouts in there as well). to maintain during the track season, you would need at least 30 minutes of tempo per week, he says.

Two to three tempos and intervals? Wow. That's quite a few workouts. I feel like that would be an injury just waiting to happen for me. I do feel like my endurance is a little lacking (I do not feel like, at this point, a 14:57 or a 31:xx would be in the cards for me - especially that 10k) and I can probably fit a tempo in on Saturdays when I'm not racing or a short one perhaps Thursday morning. Three tempos seems excessive though.

I also have my doubts about those paces. 5:33 pace for 30 minutes seems quick for me, and I should be sitting somewhere around 15:30 shape or so.

Since I'm a little weak aerobically - do you think it would be smarter to do MP length tempo or the 40-60 minute ones?

I think that he is recommending three 'workouts' a week total, where at least two of them are tempos (e.g. Saturday 8M MP, with easy distance, Tuesday long intervals (he doesn't like the short stuff, but you're a miler, so ...), Thursday 4M tempo). You do excellent track speed work--stuff right in line with Daniels's specs for your mile time. But clearly you should (just my two cents here) be a little more ambitious on the tempos. At first if 5:33 seems tough for 30 minutes, try 20 minutes or 4 miles of it (or, say, 5:40; Renato Canova in another classic thread recommends gradually building up the time on the tempos--starting with 12 minutes and up, but at a good pace, I think). You should be able to manage that now or soon. But go ahead on the weekends when you can with a marathon pace 8+ mile tempo. You can always increase the pace the next time if you go more conservatively this week. He recommends throwing the tempo into a long run on the weekend, or doing it by itself while adding another run for distance that day (say morning/afternoon). With the longer tempos and picking up the pace at least ten seconds on your shorter tempos, you should quickly see drops in your in-season 5k's and eventually the mile.

sorry to ruin the lovefest here, but if 30 minutes at 5:30+ pace feels tough for you, you are not anywhere near 15:30 5k pace. You understand that's sub 5 per mile, right? Unless you're throwing down 100 mile weeks and are feeling beaten down on tempos, you need to go run an actual 5k and have a wake up call. If you can't run a tempo of 20-30 minutes at 5:30 pace, you aren't going below 16, let alone 15.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. I don't think I did any tempos last year during track - I ran multiple sub-16s off something like 50 miles per week average (best 15:42). I doubt I would have been able to run faster than 5:50 pace for 30 minutes without feeling like trash.

I don't know why - but tempo runs are just genuinely difficult for me. I know I'm in better than 16 shape - 16:18 following two hard mile races (one the previous day, one an hour before) tells me that. It didn't feel difficult besides the fact that my legs had a few heavy stones attached to them.

Anyhoo, we'll find out. I'm not due for another 5k till the end of March - if I can get my tempo pace down to 27:30 for 5 mi by then, I'd be shocked if I didn't run under 15.

boingo wrote:

I don't think I did any tempos last year during track

I doubt I would have been able to run faster than 5:50 pace for 30 minutes without feeling like trash.

I don't know why - but tempo runs are just genuinely difficult for me.

And you wonder why you're bad at them? It's because you never do them. Why don't you try incorporating them in and then they won't be so bad. I don't understand how people can clearly indicate their weaknesses and then say that they never do the types of workouts that address them properly. Seems like common sense to me.

My workouts aren't decided by me, as I am a college athlete. I'm just to the point where I think I can handle a third workout a week, with the mileage I'm doing, without real risk of injury.

My point was that in general, my race results have indicated I should run faster in tempo runs. My response to that...is who cares how fast I run a tempo run if I race well? And that the above poster's correlation clearly doesn't really apply to everyone.

I plan to do tempo runs this track season. Read a couple posts back and you'll see that. Sorry if my post seems a bit snippy - I just figure that it's "common sense" to read a few posts back to see what the thread you're reading is about.

Thank you for all the advice, jonesy. You've been immensely helpful. As for the rest...can you guys tamp down the attitude? I understand that you're trying to be helpful but sometimes it just comes across badly.

this thread's all about getting better (or getting injured!), so give advice, but spare the criticism.

boingo, count on it: you'll quickly drop time on the tempos if you do them regularly and that will bring you big drops in the 5k this year. you are going to see sub-15 with a 3 month base of tempos, given your mile time and the fact that you've run 15:42 with no tempos.

Saturday: 12.5, Sandia Mtns (~6500-7500 ft) for 4 and darkness made me head back down for another 8.5 (slow-sub 8 pace).

Sunday: 18 easy in 2:21 with 2x .83M in 4:31 on the way out and 4:23 (5:17 pace) on the way back. should get some gatorade for these longer runs.

90 for the week. good week, stayed healthy, times went down some.