Former sprinter training 8 weeks for 4:45 mile road race

Do this set of workouts every week.

1 workout of sets of 5x200m with 30 seconds rest. This should be fully aerobic, so start out at 40-45 seconds and two sets, and as your shape improves, drop the time and add more sets. Ideally you should get to four sets and 38-40 seconds per rep. Rest two minutes between sets. Again, fully aerobic.

1 workout of 400m reps with 1 minute rest. Start with 5, get to 8. This workout is mostly aerobic, start the pace at 80-85 seconds, drop it as you get in shape to keep the same effort.

1 workout of 3 mile tempo. This is not a race, just a comfortably hard run of three miles. It's a good idea to start slower and finish faster.

In the last 4 weeks, start increasing the pace on the 400m reps, and opening the recovery to 2 minutes rest. One week out, swap one of these workouts for an 800m time trial, then during that week cut the other workouts in half.

Jog between 10-15 miles on the days between these workouts.

Thanks for the recommendations! I guess I could do those workouts every other day, do easy runs three days, and rest one day every week?

I actually tried 5 x 400m with 2 minutes off at 70 last week - got it from the Nike Running Club mile plan - and the last two reps were surprisingly hard. Definitely got ways to go in terms of aerobic capacity. So I dunno how 400s with 1 minute off will feel at first haha

Any need to do reps of 600s, 800s, etc.?

By the last line, you mean that the weekly mileage of easy runs should be around 10-15 right? That definitely seems doable.

Do a 1 mile warm-up and cool down after your workouts

4x800 (start out with a conservative give goal and go from there, ideally you'd like to run these at 2:20 eventually)

8x200 slow jog 200m back to the start and just take off, do not stop running.

2x4x400m (jog 1 lap in between for recovery) take a larger break after the frost set of 4

4:45 in 8 weeks doesn't seem like a realistic goal. Since you only have 8 weeks and you come from a sprint background I would work on your weaknesses -- the ability to maintain speed -- more than your strengths. Longer intervals and tempo runs. 600s, 800s, maybe even 1ks. I would not devote entire workouts to 200s as you just don't have the time to work all systems. To maintain speed you might want to end workouts with a few 200s or strides. The problem is, without an aerobic base it's going to be hard to do any kind of sustained track workout -- you just won't be able to recover, so you need to be very careful and not run the early intervals too hard.

I agree that it's a lofty goal, but I wanted to challenge myself. Would be satisfied with a sub-5:00, very happy with a 4:45. How does this plan look?

http://cdn.running.competitor.com/files/2011/06/Mile-Page-1.pdf

http://cdn.running.competitor.com/files/2011/06/Mile-Page-2.pdf

Or from the Nike Running Club:

http://content.nike.com/content/dam/one-nike/en_us/FA15/running/nike-run-club/Training/the-fastest-mile.pdf

The first plan said you first need to be running 3-4 times a week and should be able to run for 30 minutes comfortably. Have you done that?

Not really, but after the season ended some guys and I went for casual weekly runs (just once a week) and we covered about 4 miles at sub-8 minute pace pretty easily. I'm just assuming that my training routine has put me in shape at least comparable to that of an average person in the prescribed kind of situation.

Did 4x800 at my prescribed 5k pace (3' for 800, 6' mile) with 2 minutes off in between. Was pretty easy. Should I shave off the rest?

Will try the 200s on Wednesday, and the 400s with that much rest should be fine.

Thanks for the recs!

These sound challenging but doable, will def try them out soon! I can see the focus on aerobic capacity; thanks for the recommendations. The 400's sound hardest out of the three. I did 5x400 at a 70" pace with 2 minutes off last week, and it was quite hard. Can't imagine cutting the rest..

if you can do 5x400 at 70 on 2 minutes now, you stand a shot at running 4:45. Remember that the race is downhill for most of the first quarter and the second half, something like that, so it is pretty easy to maintain speed once you hit the halfway point. I would gradually increase to 10x400 at that pace, then start cutting the rest, eventually getting down to 45 seconds. For your second weekly workout, do something longer like 5x800-1M repeats. You can do those at 2:20-5:xx. The miles you can see quickly how they feel and what pace would be good. Since your time trial was 5:30, you have a lot of work to do on this side. Also, for the third weekly workout, do a 20 minute tempo at a pretty hard pace. After a few weeks, you can maintain a faster pace with less effort.

haha that's good to hear! Shooting for a sub-5 as a primary goal but 4:45 would be something I'd be very proud of.

So you'd pass on reps of anything below 400? The Nike plan says tomorrow I should to 5 sets of 3x200 (47.5", 45", 35") with 1 minute off, and I think I'll be able to do it without much trouble. Repeats of 800-1 mile, on the other hand...

If you want to continue running mid-d stuff, you'll have to find what works best for you. I ran a pre-season 1500 when I was a sprinter off some repeat 400s. Had I been looking to transition, I would think repeat 4s and 6s would be good, and a bunch of mixed distance workouts: 2-4-6-6-4-2, 8-6-4-2, things like that. I think repeat 200s with very little rest could be beneficial.

You're off to a good start. You've had some good advice so far, so I just am posting to request that you keep us update.

The only advice I would add is that your plan has two days a week off. I don't think that is necessary. One of those off days, I would instead suggest 20-30 minutes easy running plus some easy strides after.

You're not going to build any base in 8 weeks, so the current plan that includes mostly threshold type of running, motor learning, and building some toughness seems like the way to go.

Did the Week 2 200 workout in the Nike Running Club training plan, with shorter rest:

http://content.nike.com/content/dam/one-nike/en_us/FA15/running/nike-run-club/Training/the-fastest-mile.pdf

5 x 3 x 200 (45", 45", 35") with 45" off between every 200. Was pretty easy, finished it off with a 28". I think my challenge will be completing workouts with repeat 400s-1000s, will run 2 miles easy tomorrow then 3 miles hard on Friday, and figure out what to do for week 3.

I didn't include 200s because you have plenty of speed for this target, as evidenced by the 5x400@70 and the 28" finish, but very little endurance. 400s on increasingly short rest and longer intervals are really going to be key for you, because 5:30 should be a lot slower than your pace for repeat miles (although coming at this from a speed base means only that you need to be able to handle 800 repeats at not much slower than you were doing your quarters).

That's a good point, for week 3 I'll make my two track workouts include longer reps for sure. For one of them, the repeat 1Ks from Nike Running Club sound good, when I'm doing these (repeat 400s, 800s, 1Ks) what kind of pace should I be aiming for? For instance, the NRC plan says 3x1K @ 10k/5k/10k pace with 90" in between, which is only 3:57/3:45/3:57 and seem too slow.

The longer the interval, the harder it becomes do judge your pace. I'd say start at the 5k pace and look to cut down if you feel good. Focus on the pace, check your watch every 200m or 100m--you don't want to go out hard and jog home, or go out slow and sprint to hit the time. As even as possible. If you feel good, consider adding a couple 400s or 200s at mile pace after the 1000s...

Ok so ended up doing a mixed pace 1000 - 500 - 500 - 200 - 500 - 200 two days ago and then 4x1000 with 90" in between today. The 1000s were progressive, 3:57, 3:45, 3:40, 3:35. Gonna do the tempo run in two days.

How do those 1000s look as an interval workout?

It's now been a month of training, is there something I can do to test what kind of pace I am at currently? A time trial of a shorter distance, a workout, etc.