Very new to running. Preparing for PFT.

I don't have time to give you a complete workout, but here's one bit of advice that will help.

Running 3x400m in 90 seconds is not a good approach for you, given the short time you have to prepare and your goal time and distance. A better interval would be 6x800 in 3:50-4:00 with a recovery of 3:30 between reps. 4:00 per 800m is your goal pace for a 12 minute 1.5 mile. This will help train your body to run comfortably at your goal pace. Let's say on your first attempt, you run 6x800 in 3:50. The next week, you would run the same number of reps but reduce the recovery to 3 minutes. Then to 2:30 the following week, then to 2:00, then to 90 seconds. Your goal should be volume (ie, getting all 6 reps) not running faster than 3:50

Your two mile runs should be increased to 2 reps of 2 miles at 10 min/mile. Take a break of 10 minutes between each rep. You might need to run these a little slower, but again, you will benefit more from volume than faster speed. This is probably what, for you, would be a tempo run of 2x10minutes.

You should take an easy day between the tempo and the 6x800 to allow you recover enough to hit the hard day hard.

Greatly appreciate the feedback. This is all fairly foreign to me :P

I'll give the 6x800 a go tomorrow morning and see how close I can come to 4:00. If I'm not able to hit 4:00, lets say I hit 4:35, would I add an extra rep or two to compensate not being able to do the faster pace?

"Take a break of 10 minutes between each rep."

How critical is this? Whats negatives of taking a longer break? Like doing 2 miles in the AM and 2 miles in the PM?

"You should take an easy day between...."

Would something like the stairs/incline be considered this or something I'd likely benefit from more?

Thanks again for the feedback. A bit overwhelming with the massive amount of things on the internet about this subject.

EternalNoob wrote:

Greatly appreciate the feedback. This is all fairly foreign to me :P

I'll give the 6x800 a go tomorrow morning and see how close I can come to 4:00. If I'm not able to hit 4:00, lets say I hit 4:35, would I add an extra rep or two to compensate not being able to do the faster pace?

"Take a break of 10 minutes between each rep."

How critical is this? Whats negatives of taking a longer break? Like doing 2 miles in the AM and 2 miles in the PM?

"You should take an easy day between...."

Would something like the stairs/incline be considered this or something I'd likely benefit from more?

Thanks again for the feedback. A bit overwhelming with the massive amount of things on the internet about this subject.

I would not suggest that you add more reps. 6x800 is three miles. That's already a lot of volume for you

You should be able to do at least one or two 800s in 4 min, since you can already run 400 in 1:30, based on your initial post.

If you find you cannot run 800m in 4 min, drop the distance down to 300m in 3 minutes and do 8 reps. The goal of this workout is to accustom your body to handle the pace you need to run to do 1.5mile in 12min. Keep the recovery the same as for the 6x800.

You should warm up before you do intervals. Jog easy for 5-10 minutes. Do some easy strides (pick up the pace) for 20 seconds. Rest for a couple minutes while doing some easy dynamic stretches. Then start the workout.

Second question: The 10 minute break is so you can fully recover. Doing one in the AM and another in the PM would be okay in your situation. Eventually, you would want to do 2x10min with a 4-5min recovery between reps, but that might not be possible for you in the time you have left.

On your easy days, you can do air squats, jump squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, 6x15 second hill sprints, planks, Bugarian squats, lunges or weighted lunges. Several minutes of stairs will tire out your legs too much to run hard the next day. You could try 6 reps of 15 seconds fast on the stairs... it would be better than nothing. But trying to go longer or do more reps will hinder your recovery. Always leave this easy day feeling like you could have done a lot more.

There are lots of other workouts that you could do that would be equally (or perhaps even more) effective. The reason I suggested 6x800 is that 1) you should be able to run the goal pace right now. 2) you can track your progress from week to week.

Let us know how it goes.

How did the workout go?

EternalNoob wrote:

I'll give the 6x800 a go tomorrow morning and see how close I can come to 4:00. If I'm not able to hit 4:00, lets say I hit 4:35, would I add an extra rep or two to compensate not being able to do the faster pace?

No.

Don't do more than 6 reps; you're already doing twice the volume of your goal. Let's say 2 of the 6 reps are slower than 4:00. The next session, say in 4 days, should slightly increase the rest, maybe by 10-20 seconds - just enough to finish all the reps add fast as needed. I would treat the rest as recovery and just jog real REAL slowly. Remember, your goal is to run continuously, and stopping isn't an option.

You might Google up an article by Dan Browne with title something like, how to improve two minutes in the two mile in two months.

fisky wrote:

How did the workout go?

Not well. At the 7.5mph pace I died off quick. I felt super tired before even heading to the gym so maybe that impacted my lungs more than the previous days as even stuff I have been doing prior felt to exhaust me much quicker. I'm going to head out to a track tomorrow to try to see how treadmill correlates to real world times. I'll give the 6x800 another try on Monday to see if I can do it at the 7.5mph pace.

You will easily achieve your goal if you just get out and run 2-3 miles per day, 5 days per week for the next two months. Since you have never really run before, you will see huge gains really quickly.

Oh and run easy (conversational pace) for the first 2-3 weeks!

jtface wrote:

You will easily achieve your goal if you just get out and run 2-3 miles per day, 5 days per week for the next two months. Since you have never really run before, you will see huge gains really quickly.

jtface wrote:

You will easily achieve your goal if you just get out and run 2-3 miles per day, 5 days per week for the next two months. Since you have never really run before, you will see huge gains really quickly.

This is another approach that might work as well as the 6x800/2x2mile workouts I suggested. Either is much better than your original approach. If you try the 6x800m a couple times and it doesn't work for you, switch to this approach. If you do this, you should run a little harder or a little farther every other day. That is, run one day easy, the next day hard, the next day easy, and so on.

When you do your 6x800m on the track, there is a start/finish line. Halfway around the track is a "1" in lane 1. That is 200m from the start/finish line. At your goal pace, you should hit that halfway mark in 58-60 seconds and complete one lap in 1:55-2:00. This pace will equal 3:50-4:00 for the two laps (800s). It's okay to go slower since this is the first time you've tried this, but don't go faster.