How many other older runners on here regret not training for sub-4?

I bet you are not too old to run a sub 4 hour marathon.

You don't "train for sub four," you either have it in you or you don't.

ASD wrote:

You don't "train for sub four," you either have it in you or you don't.

what if you never tried? that's what the OP probably means.

I don't regret hanging them up when I did (at the end of college). While I have continued to jog after that, I have never run another all out race effort. I don't think I could have continued to improve on my own and for me there was nothing else to shoot for.

My only real regret (and the older I get the less it matters) is that I didn't race more distances when I was in peak shape. I would like to know what I could have run +/- 2 distances from my main event and I would have liked to post a decent marathon time (because that is what people usually ask about).

Yeah I wonder about this too. I know a couple D3 guys in the 4:05-4:07 that didn't go for it. But granted those 5-7 seconds are a lot.

Can confirm. Source: Former 4:10 D3 guy "going for it". As long as "going for it" means being an adult and squeezing in track time before or after stupid, stupid adult responsibilities.

no singlet no fries wrote:

Biggest running regret. Too old. Too slow.

i think the older you get the harder it is to remember the training and talent needed for sub 4, and the regret sets in because you think it was closer than it really was. If i had put all my eggs into the mile... maybe could have cut 1 or 2 more seconds off... still would have been bout 3-5 seconds away. .... and that would still be a huge amount of talent/hard work missing from my body to get those last 3 seconds. so just enjoy you membership in the sub 4:10 mile club and go run a marathon in sub4 hrs.. more people would be in awe of that.

Hayduke,

While what you say is true, there are a large group of us whose running careers were monuments to over training. I know that every day of my running career I could not have done any more than I did. I also know that by training that way, I limited how much I could improve. I call that a regret.

no singlet no fries wrote:

Biggest running regret. Too old. Too slow.

Sub 4 in which event? Eddylee finally achieved sub-4. Much like Kenenisa, he has a sub-4 1500, but not a sub-4 mile to his credit.

I laughed at myself when I saw this, because at age 60, one of the very few regrets I have about my running life is that in my prime, it was all about the marathon, and I now wonder not if I could have broken 4:00, but 5:00. The best I ever did was around 5:17 in an interval workout.

I think there's much truth to what this poster writes, at any competitive level. I might disagree with the last part. It sometimes feels like every adult in America has now crossed "run a marathon" off his/her bucket list, and no one knows the difference between sub-four hours or sub six hours. Even with the WR at 3:43, I think most Americans would think a sub- 4:00 mile is world class.

My hat is off to all you guys who worked so hard and competed so admirably in obscurity. You are what's good about the sport.

Yeah. I ran 3:42 when I was 21, and again when I was 27 (struggled with injuries for some of the time in between, and moved up to 5000). Didn't run a mile in either of those seasons. In fact, only ever ran two track miles -- one low-key indoor race, and one good one in my mid-20s when I was coming back from injury (where the winning time was sub-4 but I was only in 4:06 shape).

I don't lie awake at night or anything, but I definitely wish I'd given it a crack when I was fit. As I tell anyone who asks, I was always a strength-oriented guy, so hanging on for an extra 109m would have been easy! And I closed in 57 in my PR race! Please believe me! :)

Sub 4 minutes is something special, like one poster said I think the older some people get they tend to forget just how hard you have to train, or even how fast you need to be running workouts to be near that type of performance.

I know personally I don't regret it or even now at an age where I'm in my prime as far as speed is concerned I just don't have the talent to run a sub 4 minute mile, a sub 4 1500m, yeah no problem, but for the mile, ain't happening.

That's ok though you know, the beauty of the sport is that it provides us with whatever challenges we choose to seek out, I love the 3km-10km distances right now. Other's love the marathon.

But I know what the OP is asking, it would sure be nice to be able to say "I'm a sub 4 minute miler," But not everyone has that talent, time to devote or desire.

DaveF wrote:

But I know what the OP is asking, it would sure be nice to be able to say "I'm a sub 4 minute miler," But not everyone has that talent, time to devote or desire.

I think you could easily prescribe the regret aspect of his question to any distance or target that we older runners may have had. Personally, I wish that I had found the endurance sports upon graduating HS. I didn't run in school, but played ball sports, which I don't regret. Besides, there was not much of a running program at our school. Like so many people, I put the weight on after graduating and started to run to lose weight, but not until into my late 20s. I liked the competitive nature of it and found it satisfied that desire. Unfortunately, I look back and don't think I did all I could to maximize (minimize?) my PRs. I regret not being disciplined enough to put it all together (nutrition, weight and speedwork) into what I feel could have been my best efforts at a number of distances.

no singlet no fries wrote:

Biggest running regret. Too old. Too slow.

I am 34, my mile PR is 4:3x, and I am training for sub-4. :)

At 58, that's what I'm shooting for in May when I'll be 59. :-)

I don't regret it, I ran 3:47.9 for 1500 in 1984, but not being American there were no miles to race. In my '40's I thought a lot about finding a downhill stretch in my town where I might have been able to do it, but never followed through. If I were to try now it would probably rip my hamstrings apart.

No. I was a 4:10 guy. 10 seconds? Might as well be 100 years.

HS 4:20ish miler here. Ran 4:11 after college with less than optimal training and working full time. Never had the opportunity to train as a miler while in college, let alone the opportunity to even run a true mile.

The problem is that most college coaches don't want or need everyone training to be a miler. Most of us who could have concievably trained to be sub-4 milers ended up being trained as generic 5k/10k/SC during our college careers because that's where the most point potential for conference championships comes from - it's the way most conference meets are structured. The steeple and 10k finals are held on the first day along with the 800 and 1500 prelims, while the rest of the finals are the next day. A decent distance kid can score more points racing either a steeple/5k double or a 10k/5k double. Very few can master a 1500/5k double, fewer still an 800/1500 double or a steeple/1500 double.

If we ran a 1500 it was only as a sharpening tool for the 5k. Often the only time we could even run a true mile was indoors if at all. The guys who were trained in the middle distances in college usually were guys who had already run 1:50ish in the 800 and sub 50 in the 400 while in HS.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have skipped going to college right out of HS and just trained on my own to be what I wanted to be - a sub-4 miler. The college system has probably ruined more sub-4 dreams than it has helped realize those dreams.

I regret not making enough attempts at it.

I ran 3:42.1 for 1500m which converts to a 3:59.9 mile, so it was in me to run sub 4.

Indoors was the time to do it but there weren't many good races to get into.

I once went to a race at BU but found I wasn't entered and was stuck in the third heat.

The first heat was won in 3:58. I had a blister that bothered me that day and won my heat in a slow time.

Another time I caught the flu in the middle of indoor and it set me back. I ran 4:04 the next week.

Outdoors I was always chasing a 1500m standard.

I had a chance at Penn once but was listed as an alternate.

Just not enough chance and I didn't make it a priority at the time.