Breaking 4:40 Before Junior Year.

Here is the history of how the original "Summer of Malmo" came about back in 1989.

"Summer of Malmo" is "a foolproof, no-nonsense, 100 percent guaranteed program that will help runners of all abilities to improve their fitness over the summer WITHOUT the attendant physical or mental fatigue" just as it says in the first paragraph. It is in-between season training. It isn't a training "program" so-to-speak.

"Summer of Malmo" was born out of John Schiefer's Track&FieldMedia.com message board almost twenty years ago. Tranck&FieldMedia was the "Granddaddy of the running message boards" and had Schiefer not decided to spend more time on his day job Letsrun would have never become the "world famous message board" it is today.

Track&FieldMedia.com was just like it is here today, full of runners looking for the secret workout or the secret program that will take them to the next step. Every year about this time they start devising all sort of ingenious plans for the Summer to get them ready for cross country season. Then, as it is now, they were looking for a blueprint for the Summer, when in reality there is no blueprint, there are no secret workouts at all. All there is, is consistency, persistence and patience -- just as it always was. Summer of Malmo is a concept, not a blueprint, feel free to adjust it to suit your needs.

Knowing that "consistency, persistence and patience" doesn't excite anyone, one day I posted on T%FMedia that I had the Summer program that was exactly what all of the young bucks were looking for, and that when I get a chance I'll post it. This became somewhat of a running joke at the T&FMedia message boards, each week someone would ask about my summer "training" program and each week I's say, I'm still "working on it.

Finally in June, I realized I couldn't procrastinate any longer, so I sat down and wrote "Summer of Malmo" with the Seinfeld episode of "Summer of George" in the background on TV. It was born part out of reality, the Summer of 1989 that Terrance Mahon decided he was going to get serious, and went from unknown scrub to College All-America, but it was also part reflection of mine as to how high school and college runners should go about training during the Summer between seasons.

Historically, runners tend to come from two camps; their motivation gets misplaced during the Summer and they do too little training to prepare themselves for XC, or they train too hard, come to school in great shape and don't improve, causing disillusionment and then misplace blame on their coach for ruining them.

I decided that if I could do it over again, or if I were a college coach, I'd direct my runners that the first thing they should do when they get home is to call all of their friends up and make a commitment to meet twice weekly for informal training sessions. I'd tell them to put the word out to all of the local high school teams and invite them to the training sessions as well. The point of those sessions would be that this is a social event and the workouts would be low-stress aerobic workouts. ALL WORKOUTS would be run at an intensity level that is well-within the ability of all runners.

Quote from Malmo on previous thread

24:47 5k vs a 4:53 1600 is a terrible range. Learn to run before you think of going sub 4:20

I've now finished cross country season with a 17:24 5k and a 10:43 2 mile so I feel that my range is a bit better now. Not sure if this is completely dead but I'd still like some tips for training in preparation for outdoor track. During the XC season, we would do VO2 Max like 4 x 1200 once a week on Monday and 8x400 at faster than race pace every Wednesday with easy days on Tuesday and Thursday, Friday off, and with a race on Saturday. This led to me peaking early and running a 17:24 at our first meet of the season and a 17:51 at our last meet about a month ago. I've read about many different methods but with my ambitious goals, I'm not sure which is right for me. I want to know what I can do to get ready for track season without setting myself up to peak early like I did in XC. Any and all help is appreciated

You'll be really good, man! Keep working. Look at the top thread by California Runner, everything is there.

Now at 9:56, 4:37, and 2:01 for the 2 mile, mile, and 800 respectively but I'm hoping to make significant drops. Thanks for the advice.

Yaseen wrote:

Now at 9:56, 4:37, and 2:01 for the 2 mile, mile, and 800 respectively but I'm hoping to make significant drops. Thanks for the advice.

Come to my team and i'll get you to 14:40 5k and 4:20 mile within a year.

I am now an NCAA champ (on a relay though to be fair), 13:33 5k, 3:57 Mile, thank you for all the help Ben!

looks like the advice worked lol

The man himself. Congrats Yaseen!

Writing that to Ben was probably one of the more satisfying moments of your life (aside from being indoor NCAA DMR champ, obviously.)

For anyone else who sees this thread and his curious, his times (easily discoverable with a quick google search, so I don't think I'm doxxing anyone) are very real and the story shown in this thread is also very real. Here are the times and an article about him:

athletic.net

Yaseen Abdalla

Yaseen Abdalla - TX Track & Field results and photos on Athletic.net

Link:www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/Athlete...

runnersworld.com

Meet Yaseen Abdalla, Who Rose From Walk-On to NCAA Champion for Texas

How he went from being a “hopeless” high school runner with the help of goal-setting and taking big chances in his training.

Link:www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a...