How to "go for broke" in college?

eat more

The best way is to not go crazy. You need the balance of life to stay motivated. Everyone likes to get worked up every offseason and get after it, but the key to success is long term, repeatable, boring old training. Get in a long run each week, get in something a little faster, and as you seem to understand, RECOVER.

As the Johnson brothers say, good training is something that is repeatable. This means don't go out there and crush workouts you can't do again for months. Just keep all the plates spinning at once and you'll get there.

tl;dr you absolutely have the right idea, just remember improvement is never linear and you just have to put in the time.

Sounds like you already train a lot like a pro to me. What would you do if you had more money? I'm guessing altitude or a pro training group?

Setting that aside, I don't think you gain much from those other ideas you mention unless you feel like they fix a major shortcoming. Instead, re-examine the stuff you are already doing and decide if you are getting enough return on your time investment. Do you really need 20 min of rollout and stretching every day? Maybe they answer is yes, but worth asking the question. In general, if you having been doing the same things for a couple of years, you might be getting stagnant mentally and physically, so switching things up a bit could break you out of a rut.

Overall your routine looks good. Since you don't offer details, I would suggest a look at your weight training. Maybe get some feedback from pros and see if that can be tweaked a bit.

outsider - thanks, I've noticed substantial improvements as soon as I put as much focus into recovery as my training itself. Also, this definitely isn't a base phase craze type thing, I've been thinking and reading about these kinds of things all lockdown, but can't seem to put my finger on things that will help besides "run more" and "do the little things".

Bullet - You are right, altitude would be the next step I can think of, and if it wasn't an issue at all, maybe trying alter-g miles and other things like that. I get what you're saying, but rolling out specifically makes a huge difference for me, but I'll look into other things. Lifting is given by my coach and I know almost nothing about it, so it's hard to adjust that.

I'm really looking for those marginal "1%" gains, but I'm also thinking of really hitting the mileage too (hit my first 100 before freshman year and averaged 80 give or take and added about 10 a year to the average).

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

Sounds like you already train a lot like a pro to me. What would you do if you had more money? I'm guessing altitude or a pro training group?

Overall your routine looks good. Since you don't offer details, I would suggest a look at your weight training. Maybe get some feedback from pros and see if that can be tweaked a bit.

Naps. would be be the one thing that I see pros doing. There is decent evidence that a 30-45 min nap helps release more HGH and the like which should help recovery.

Weights, drills, plyos and the like are another potential area but a lot will depend on where you are.

The big one would be figuring out if your program needs to be changed. Maybe. you need more tempo type efforts ( maybe the 2x/day routines which seem so hot right now). Maybe you need more volume at around 10k pace. Or maybe you just need more 3k/5k work. Or hill sprints.

Or of course maybe you just need to give it time for your body to adapt to all the training you have been doing.

asdf - Naps are something I try to do, but don't always get around to doing. Maybe that should change. Drills are something I did forget to mention, I have been working on my form a lot. Plyos are done in combination with our weights. I've always wondered about the Gambetta thing though? I think the training is good, but obviously it's never perfect. I am in college, so I'm doing what my coach says which involves a good MP paced tempo at least every other week and then a LT - Mile pace session the workout day with either a fast or LSD long run to make my 3 hard days. The training isn't mind boggling, but very repeatable, which is why I'm considering adding more mileage. I am currently double 6 days/week as well (3 -5/day). You're probably right about the time thing, but I don't want to get a year or two down the road and wish I had added a certain thing and regret not looking for it previously.

Thanks for the input so far guys

You sound like a good guy.

What is troubling to me is that you are asking random people on a message board how to go under 14.

As is always the case you’re going to get a lot of advice here and elsewhere without people knowing enough about your training. That invalidates the information you are receiving. I don’t know what kind of athlete you are? For example, what are your pr’s for middle distance, longer distances? What paces are you running throughout the week? Mike pace? What is that for you? Nobody knows but you here. What do you consider to be your LT pace? How do you know that is what it is for you?

More mileage might be the answer or it may not be.

The most destructive thing to an athlete of your caliber can do is seek out advice without your coach being involved. If you start picking advice from here and there then you are not really being coached by anyone and worse in that you have conflicting advice you are following.

What does your coach say to do about going sub 14? Does your coach know you are here asking for advice? If your coach doesn’t know, then you know you should not be fishing around. If your coach does not want to get you there or you have no confidence in them then you need a new coach. You can only have one coach overseeing the big picture for you to be an effective runner. Other coaches and random advice should go through the coach.

* meant to say mile pace which my phone decided to change to mike pace.

95% of college runners who are faster than you are doing less than 100 MPW.

Run on pure hate

Remember to race and have fun. If you aren't attempting anything more beyond college, have some fun with your running and racing.

otter - I do have a coach, and I trust him. I guess I wasn't very clear at the start, I'm not really looking for advice on how to do my specific workouts and mileage and all that, I'm more looking for advice on all the little things. My coach takes care of everything that involves running, although he lets me add on mileage as I feel. I more said my goal to show I'm willing to do what it takes, I just don't have a book titled "the little things" to choose from and can't seem to find a whole lot either. I do appreciate the response though.

Ncaa ruler - 95% of the guys faster than me are probably more talented than me (or at least a good portion)

regular guy - will do

sub sub elite - I am definitely attempting more post collegiately, but I gotta get to a point to where it's worth while. Lots of fun is being had. Racing is the goal.

First, you are not a loser.

Second, you seem to be doing everything very well. Just be patient with it. Its a long game as you already know. Most if the times there is no need to tweak much but just stay consistent with it. With the specifics that you shares - sleep, rolling, milleage, etc. How long have you been doing it at that level? 3 months, 6 months, a year, two years? I would say that if you have not been at that level for at least a year, there is no need to add more, just stay doing it. It might be useful to have that longer period perspective. As an example if a pro is doing 100mi/week one year, it does not mean that he will increase to 110mi/week next year, 120 the year after that and etc. This applies to everything, most of the times it is just doing more of the same for long period of time that results in improvement. Yeah, you get better, paces get quicker, etc but it will happen naturally.

One short term solution that you might look for might be heat training as a substitute to altitude. Read something like

https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/sse-153-heat-acclimatization-to-improve-athletic-performance-in-warm-hot-environments

and discuss with your coach. Generally, you could try just doing your easy runs on treadmill in warm evrinonment several times a week where you are forced to sweat a lot. From my personal experience, 7-10 days and my heart rate is dropping signidicantly for the same pace. As you are highly trained, the impact might be less for you. One of the main mechanisms is that increased sweating bloood plasma volume to increase which means that your blood viscosity drops, ie its easier for heart to pump blood. Additionally, it seems that increased volume also encourages increase in red blood cells number. If you test it, let us know how it goes in a few weeks.

second serve - Thanks, I had completely forgotten about heat training, I even made fun of my friend for attempting it this summer, but after reading this, it does make me interested in it. I just need to figure out how I'm going to because I'll be going home for over a month soon and we only have a treadmill outside and it's winter. As for how long I've been doing stuff, the mileage has been relatively high for a while, and the rolling out, stretching, sleep, etc has been going on for at least a year. Maybe that means something will start happening soon? Thanks for that article, it makes me very interesting in trying it.

otter wrote:

* meant to say mile pace which my phone decided to change to mike pace.

Oh ok. I wondered why you brought my name up.

maybe you want to consider the rest of your life...hardly any college 100 mile per week guys are still running in to midlife.

I've done "heat training" (or the closest I could get to it) on a treadmill in the winter. I just wore two layers of clothes and opened all the heater vents in the room where the treadmill is; if you've got a space heater that would work too. It kind of sucks but I run faster when I do it in the off-season so I guess it's worth it. Just make sure you don't get dehydrated or anything, and don't do it every single day either (maybe do one workout a week on the treadmill and do heat training on that day).

You're young....McDonald's every day...

I think training with sub 14 minute runners would help