Revamping My Life: How Fast Can I Run This Spring?

Your longer distance PRs aren't really that much stronger than your mile PR. If you focus on the mile, you could probably get into the mid 4:20s range. The fact that your 3200 and your 3k steeple are both the same is also good... this probably shows that you're improvements would be more over running faster (not over jumping barriers better etc). I'd be curious to know what you could have run in a mile off of 65-80 mpw in college training.

Anyway, good luck with your goals!

I regularly ran ~4:15 in the 1500 in rust busters before bigger races (ie. time trial a 1500 before 5k/10k at bigger meets). My PR was 4:13 at 1500, but that was, again, a freshman year PR.

you will run 57 2:05 4:33 and 9:44 again, exactly, and no faster. ever.

just start running marathons

You need to forget about building to 90mpw and top out at 60. After you get to 60 add one 20min tempo, one day of drills/plyos and one day of short hills.

If your 400 PR is a 57 split, that should be the focus of your base. Build leg strength.

A circuit you could do on your drills/plyos day would look like:

stride 100m, jog back/ bound 50m, jog back/high knees for 50m, jog back/butt kick 50m, jog back/lunges for 25m, jog back/find a box or bleacher that comes up to you knees and jump on it 10-15 times/jog 2-4 mins.

repeat 4-5 times after a 4-6mile run.

On the "hill" day find a 20-30 sec. steep hill and sprint up it 15-20 times after a 4-6 mile run.

In November or December trade the circuit work for 3-4x200 at 400m pace w/ full recovery.

If you have any talent, you can drop you're 400m PR by 3-4seconds, which (assuming you maintain aerobic fitness) translates to 12-16 seconds off your Mile PR.

If you actually train like a MD runner and aren't a talentless wreck, I'll give you 1:57-2:00/ 4:18-4:25,

Do 4x100 accelerations after your longrun.

By January, long intervals at 3k-5k pace should be your aerobic focus rather than tempos. And the typical 8x400 at mile pace and 8x200 at 800 pace should be run once a month each.

Typical base week:

S- 14mi + 4x100m

M- 8mi

T- 20mi tempo

W- 6mi + 4 circuits

T- 8mi

F- 6mi + 15x20-30 sec hills

S- 0

That week is 55-60 miles.

I don't know why I decided to respond with as such. I doubt you'll even read it, but what-evs.

-STS

I think you can come close to breaking 2:00 or even do it if you build up your strength and get the 400 to 53-54.

sexy time smith wrote:

Been meaning to reply to this for a while, yes I did read your post. So far things are going according to plan, this past week was my 4th at 50, with one workout a week (I alternate between tempos and economy work either 200s or hills). I'll do another month of that stuff, around 60 mpw, then a fitness test of 3 miles XC on a well established course with good competition.

October, November, December I'm planning on building up to 70, 80, and 90 miles (respectively) per week, with more workouts added in, almost exclusively tempo and threshold work. I have a pdf file of a powerpoint Vin Lanana gave when he was at Stanford, so I've taken some of the workouts there and adapted them to my pace and fitness (once I find out how fit I actually am haha).

January and February will be hard V02 max workouts, once again ripping a page from Vin's playbook, then March and early April to work on speed, with an aim to peak in mid to late April and maybe early May.

The plyos and running drills are a good idea. I've done them in the past and have felt they helped me. I'll have to start adding those in some more.

As far as training like a true mid-d runner, I'm planning on using the 800-1500 plan from the powerpoint. There's also a 1500-5k plan, and a 5k-10k plan, but I've been running 5k-10k for a while, and was probably training more like a 1500-5k guy, so I'm thinking I'll be drifting towards the 800-1500 plan once things get more specific.

Thanks for the input, hopefully this will continue to go well, my training has been good so far, but I have only a general idea of where my XC fitness is at, and no clue in the slightest what I could do for mid-d right now haha. I'll keep updating this thread every week or two.