Compare Your Fastest Race PR's To Your Fastest Practice Bests.

600m: 1:17.2 practice

800m: 1:47.5 race

I found myself contantly getting nervous before races and either going out too hard in races or psyching myself out of them.

I also found myself to be in my best shape a few weeks after cross and when my mileage was highest. Unfortunately in college, my team wasn't high mileage oriented so the weeks when I would get my highest mileage would come during vacations and I set my PR's in college in either the first or second meets back from vacations when I could train the way that I know to be successful. I always ran great workouts in college and my training in college did not translate into freat races so I totally get this conversation.

I got much, much better in college. In high school I never broke 60 in the 400, which by the way I hadn't run a 400 since my sophomore year in high school when I was a sprinter. The only reason that I was a sprinter my freshmen and sphomore years was because I sucked so much and as soon as I took running seriously and ran a summer base the only races that I ran fresh from my junior year on were the 1,600 and 3,200 meters and I never ran a 400 even on a relay.

In college in a workout I ran 62, 61, 60 and 59 for a set of 400's. I also ran 24 x 400 in college with a 50 meter fast jog in between each rep with my fastest rep at 62 seconds and my slowest rep at 64 seconds. Only myself and another distance runner on our team were able to keep up with this workout and we both got the exact same splits on every rep.

After this workout the distance captain on my team was certain that I would run about a 4:16 mile and about 8:20 in the 3k which I never did.

I ran some killer workouts in college, but my races were never comparable. I never got why. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why.

And ever since college I've run sporadically, entered three races with minimal training (less than 25 miles per week) and have run close to my PR's in all three of the races I've entered and every race has been a 5k and up.

I can explain this, I now believe in myself and I am clear about my abilities, but the poor races in college are inexplicable to me. Maybe it's because I didn't believe that I could compete with the "Big Boys" in college, in fact that's likely it. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

I went through the same exact thing! 8x400 in 59, 3x800 in 2:01 (lots of rest), 5xK in 2:46, 8xK in 2:49, 5x1600 in low 4:40 range, all were workouts I had done, with minimal recovery. Translation? Not under 14:20 and not under 3:52. More like 14:50 and 4:01 if I was lucky!

14:48 5k race

15:16 on the back 5k of a 6 mile tempo.

Miss the point much:

You are a king of trolls. Let's put your arrogance aside for a moment and consider the thread. Compare Race PRs vs Practice PRs. If this isn't the appropriate place to compare the mindset that it takes to run PRs in a race vs practice, you are a pea brained, narrow minded idiot who is incapable of understanding the proverbial saying "think outside the box." For crying-out-loud pull out a Webster's dictionary and look up the meaning of COMPARE!!! Comparing means doing just that. Comparing times, comparing attitude, comparing mindset, comparing health, comparing weather. Comparing the reasons why PRs were run in one setting or the other.

Though many have done so, the phrase "compare the fastest PR's to Your Fastest Practice Bests" hardly limits the writer to strictly posting times of both. Geez, have you even read any of these postings before opening your loud, uneducated, obnoxious mouth? It's almost embarrassing that I've had to point this out to you in front of the world as I do not appreciate bringing other's shortcomings to light. Alas, you allowed your idiocy to cloud your judgement so I was forced to respond not once but twice.

"In college in a workout I ran 62, 61, 60 and 59 for a set of 400's. I also ran 24 x 400 in college with a 50 meter fast jog in between each rep with my fastest rep at 62 seconds and my slowest rep at 64 seconds."

There is no possible way you ran 24x400 with a 50m rest hitting those times. Especially since you have not even run 4:16 for the mile.

I agree i never heard of 24x400 in those times, i posted on another thread about 8x400 with the 50 meter jog and how the first 3 felt really slow but the next 2 reps were very hard and the last 3 were very painful.....and this person says they did an additional 16, sure....

the OP caught my eye as ALL the guys i knew who were coached by that crazy Hungarian Laszlo Tabori always were bragging about their workouts and then they were absolutely devastated when they could not come close to matching their times in races.

A few of us were curious because we knew these guys and not all of them could be equally delusional, so we snuck over to their practice at Valley college and timed them ourselves. Tabori was yelling lap times that were 2-3 seconds faster than what we clocked. That 4:20 mile was a 4:30 poor bastards, He thought he was building their confidencebut instead he destroyed their pacing. Every race when they would hear their splits you could tell what was running through there mind" God this pace feels so much harder than practice and I am already 5 seconds behind THAT pace..."

When we got to college they got worse & worse, Every important race they would get hammered. At the cross country Championship we walked by their area to shake hands after the race and someone had left a Huge Rope made into a Hangmans Noose among their gear. I thought that was the worst case of Sportsmanship i had ever seen, someone told me later it was their friggin coach who did it!

If u run faster in practice, get a new coach it will only get worse...

I had a really good 800 coach who was one of the best in the world in his day and we Never went hard for race distance, 800 is more about maintaing form & pain tolerance

so we would do 600 at race pace and then we would shift gears prepare to sprint, sprint a few stridss and then jog the last 180 meters home very easy, we did alot of work on form & technique, trying to maximize efficiency and almost all our other track work was 200 repeats, race pace with little recovery.

the 600 work was painful so we only did that periodically just to remind us what that 800 was going to feel like and what we would need to do at the end.

I am a little stumped by all out race distance effort in practice other thsn sprinting

800 pr = 1:48

800 practice 1:54

5k TT 15:13

5k race 14:24

800m race 1:43:86

800 workout 1:39.77

1500 race 3:29.66

1500 workout 3:24.29

Mile race 3:46.76

Mile workout 3:41.15

5000 race 12:58.39

5000 workout 12:35.51

10000 race 27:26.11

10000 workout 26:31.68

Marathon race - none

Marathon workout 1hr 59:46

800m race 1:57

Practice 2:01

Mile race 4:12

Practice 4:28

3k/2mile race 8:24 3k

9:14 2mile

Half marathon race 1:09:05

Practice 1:10:08

I don't race marathons in practice.

I've never once run a full distance time trial in training, but like may people here it seems my workouts were far 'better' than my actual best race performances.

In the season I ran my best 1500m (3.44), my workouts included:

200 (1'rest) 400 (2'rest)600 (10'rest)600(2'rest)400(1'rest)200 in 25/55/87/86/54/24

2x800 in 1.57 (5'rest) 4x400 in 56/57 (3'rest) 4x200 in 25/6 (200 jog)

16x400 in 61 (45 " rest)

1000+600+400 in 2.27 + 83 + 51 (7' rest)

All sessions were done alone.