400 800 1600 3200 5K is it my speed or endurance

speed endurance

400m PR means you have plenty of speed. Endurance is your limiting factor. How old is that mile PR and was that 5k PR done on a short course?

your 800 pr is complete garbage compared to the 400

it's a mix of endurance and speed endurance.

3200m is roughly an 87% aerobic race, so I would say you should focus on endurance based workouts instead of speed work if you want to improve. Leg speed definitely plays a role, but doing a lot of 200s and 400s won't get your PR down by a whole lot. Focus on 800s, 1000s, 1200s, tempos, long runs, etc.

1600m is only 70% aerobic so speed work is gonna play a bit more of a role in how fast you can run it but again, if you aren't putting in the miles then you can't expect to drop your times by a lot.

Thanks all.

The 3200 was as a frosh (injury last year before season started) but the rest are from last year although my 5K in xc was this year. Not on a short course, but weather was absolutely perfect on that day and everyone had a massive PR.

Appreciate the help.

How long are your long runs and how much tempo/fartlek work do you do?

frank frank wrote:

your 800 pr is complete garbage compared to the 400

it's a mix of endurance and speed endurance.

Yep. Your endurance for the longer stuff is also not bad, I'd say it's mostly speed endurance (which is odd given your 400 is relatively way faster than your 800). What was your 800 race like? Was it a good race mentally? I'd expect that result given your other PRs if it just happened to be a bad race and you don't race 800 often.

That 800 should be at least 2:05 to make any sense. 2:03/4 would be better. Then everything lines up about right.

I had similar 400 and 3200 prs and was able to break 4:30 for the mile. One thing I wish I had done more of in high school was more mileage during track. I did 50-70 during the summer for XC but for track I would only get 30-40. I believe with 54 second 400m speed combined with 50-70 mpw I could have gone much faster in the 1600 and 3200.

So I suggest more endurance

XC courses can’t be used as comparisons. You could break 16 on a silly fast course or run 18 minutes on a really tough course. Your times are pretty consistent so just keep doing what your coach tells you to do and you will break 4:20 senior year.

400 is solid

Should be able to break 2:00 for 800

Endurance needs work my take

Speed Endurance. Just keep training, getting the right mileage, getting the right quality workouts, train smart and you'll improve.

I'd say it's your endurance. Or as other people have said your 'speed endurance'. If you're already doing decent distance long runs, try making them a little faster. Quicker long run goes a long ways. Running a 54 400 is really pretty good for a distance runner, so you're not lacking the speed. A 75 is a jog compared to 54.

A 60 flat 400 guy could run 2:08 if they have good endurance.

For reference I'd say my endurance was great compared to my speed, but I was:

400 - 52

800 - 1:55

1600 - 4:14

3200 - 9:05

Positive Contribution wrote:

Speed Endurance. Just keep training, getting the right mileage, getting the right quality workouts, train smart and you'll improve.

Thanks and sorry for the dumb question, but when you guys say speed endurance, you're talking about doing more 400s, 800s and 1200s? Just more longer speed work right? My long runs during cross were about an hour or up to 90 mins. Since they were long runs we'd run them as a group on Sundays at about an 8 min pace so we could take the freshmen with us and it wouldn't be too fast for them.

Speed endurance is running 'fast' for a long time. It's not fast in the sense of running 200 meters at a pace that feels fast. It's running pretty fast for a while. Getting your 3-5 mile tempo runs to be a faster pace and doing fartleks where you're running the fast parts for a few minutes and keeping the jog still decently fast and trying to run quick at the end of long runs, these things help your speed endurance.

Running 200/400 meter intervals aren't going to help the speed endurance since you're only running fast for 30-75 seconds tops. Stretch it out a bit and get used to running 'fast' for longer periods of time. This will drop your 3200 the most and also your 1600. Your 400 is already pretty good.

Sorry for last question, but am I better off running one more repeat or doing the normal number (driven by coach) but running harder?