How good do you think my chances are at sub 5 this season?

Impossible. You'd be lucky to break 5:15.

It's possible to make some big improvements as a freshman if you have a good training program, but 24 seconds is a lot in the mile - that's 6 seconds per lap. I'd say it depends on a lot of things - what were your 5k times like in XC? How fast can you do a 400m all-out? How hard was the 5:24 effort? Were the splits optimal? These questions would go a long way towards providing your answer.

The real important thing I'd say is to remain consistent in your training and avoid injury. Focus on long term development and keep training hard. If you don't go sub-5 this year you have three more years to do so, and probably as a junior you'll run sub-5 so easily you'll be amazed that it was ever a challenge.

Honestly, my 5k time during XC was crap and I have no idea why. I ran 22:28 in XC. The other day I ran around 20:50 for a tempo run and it wasn't even that difficult. I was recovered after about a minute and wasnt even sore or anything. I think right now I am in around 18:30-19 flat shape. I think in a few weeks I am going to run a 5k time trial since I have no track meets until March. I have never run a 400 all out and fresh. I imagine I could ran 67-68. My best 800 is 2:23.

OnTheHunt wrote:

Honestly, my 5k time during XC was crap and I have no idea why. I ran 22:28 in XC. The other day I ran around 20:50 for a tempo run and it wasn't even that difficult. I was recovered after about a minute and wasnt even sore or anything. I think right now I am in around 18:30-19 flat shape. I think in a few weeks I am going to run a 5k time trial since I have no track meets until March. I have never run a 400 all out and fresh. I imagine I could ran 67-68. My best 800 is 2:23.

Skip the time trial. Spend the time working on your speed. This means repeats of 200m or less, with lots of recovery. You want to work toward 5 x 200m with 3-5 minutes recovery or 6-8 x 100m, again with full recovery. You can even go shorter if you like.

Do something like this once a week; the day before your tempo run day is maybe best.

The repeats should be 90-100%; the point of this is to practice running as fast as you can.

My coach said that one of our primary focus points this year is gonna be longer strength building intervals, 500s, 600s etc. I am sure we will still be doing some of those shorter ones but I spent all winter working on my endurance and I feel I have finally built it up to be equal to my speed. At the end of XC my PRs for 800 and Mile were 2:34 and 5:48.

OnTheHunt wrote:

My coach said that one of our primary focus points this year is gonna be longer strength building intervals, 500s, 600s etc. I am sure we will still be doing some of those shorter ones but I spent all winter working on my endurance and I feel I have finally built it up to be equal to my speed. At the end of XC my PRs for 800 and Mile were 2:34 and 5:48.

Good, those workouts are what you want, as long as you do enough of them (like 8-10) 500's/600's, and with short enough rest (1-2min). Doing slightly longer intervals (like 1000's) throughout the season could also be critical so you can transfer that speed endurance to an aerobic start to your mile. The people saying you need more speed don't really know the young runner I don't think. With 2:23 speed and such a strong drop off to your mile, I'm guessing you have 63 400 speed AT LEAST, otherwise you just race the 800 way harder than the mile, which is a possibility and occurs quite often. The 500's and 600's will also help your 800 drop to under 2:20, which is right where you want to be to be in that mid 4:50 range.

That being said, it could be difficult to break 5 IF you don't have a strong enough aerobic base or you don't manage to carry it all the way through the season.

I don't think I raced the 800 harder, but my the miles I ran indoors always came after my 800s, so it may not show my true mile potential. During the season I don't think I'll be racing a whole lot of 800s and will probably focus on 2 mile/mile. My school is reay deep with 800 guys, with 4 guys faster than me, and another guy just a few seconds behind me. There is only 1 good 2 miler on my team, and no one wants to run it. I hope that my coach wil have me doing enough repeats to really benefit from them, sometimes we have days where we total up to 2 miles for the whole practice, and sometimes we do 12x400.

If you have a really low mileage day and you have the strength to go on, just do a cooldown by yourself and turn it into a fartlek for 10-12 min and then follow that with your cooldown. You also have to realize that 4 guys under 2:23 is not extremely deep, and that running is far more competitive than that, so don't let your teammates hold you back from you potential. If your school really is so uncompetitive, then those guys might (emphasis on the 'might' I don't know them personally) be a bit jerky to you if they see you doing extra stuff, but don't let them hold you back, since those guys are probably all scrubs anyway.

Don't worry about it, the USA is freezing over. Running won't matter unless you're chasing a mastodon.

I don't even know that you'll see this but I don't live in a fast state. Of the 4 faster than me 2 are 2:07-2:11 guys and the other two are like 2:18-2:20 giys. That in my state is good enough to be competitive.