slowpoke

This is a good goal.

I want you to understand that you’re not giving us the right data.

“Relative beginner” is an incredibly broad statement, and I need to know if you’re running those times after 3 months or a year because those are, resultantly, very different numbers in context.

There are a lot of reasons you could be bad at the 800. My legs are too long and I’m too angry. Thus, over the years my mile times have trended more valuably than my 800m times. You should also understand that sprinting for 100m isn’t really relevant. For anything above 800m, the race requires the capacity to accelerate to a sprint at the end, not run a sprint exclusively. Your legs could be big and strong, thus increasing your mass and power output. This would make you better at more aerobically-savvy environments and sprints, but less so at the middle distances of 400 and 800.

Also, if you’re running the 400 and 800 “in training runs” that can mean anything from an interval in a workout with whole minutes of rest on either side, or a whole quarter-mile downhill at the end of your daily 3-5 miler. You shouldn’t consider the second one as valuable because the world records aren’t run on a downhill. “some of which were close to all out efforts” again…where is this taking place at. Are you tired when you try hard, are you rested, were you on a flat surface.

The fun part about your lack of detail is that it isn’t going to change my advice.

Do more mileage, add strides at the end of your run. If you’re a relative beginner, you need to develop aerobic capacity. At your age, it’s probably the only part of the sport you really can develop without pharmacological help.

Your body uses different energy systems for efforts that vary in intensity & time. Most folks would say it's obvious that the quickness for a speedy 100m is entirely different from the aerobic fitness needed for a 5K. What may be less obvious is that for strenuous efforts of approx 40 seconds to around 2 minutes, there is a different energy system(s) at work and that you must train properly in order to improve significantly.

So you might have some decent basic speed to run 100m at 40+ without much training, and you have done enough easy running etc for basic aerobic fitness to run 1 mi in less than 8 min and 5K @ 9-min pace. But there are more energy systems to train.

Hi ecoAnPac, thank you for the tips. To answer some of your questions:

+ “Relative beginner”: I started running regularly this past winter the first time in my life, so more than 3 months and less than a year, more like 6-7 months regularly 3-4 times a week, because I lost a couple weeks or so several times over these months this because of some random injury or the other. I’m generally fit and skinny and have been physically active in other sports, but somehow managed to avoid running all my life until this past winter when I discovered that I love it.

+ How measured: I measured the 100, 400, and mile on a track nearby, not GPS, so it should be pretty accurate. My 400m times were usually the first or the second lap while doing 400m intervals, which I almost always did after a hard mile run and some rest on track days, so I suppose even the 400 wasn’t quite on fresh legs. The 5K was measured on road with GPS, so it might not be accurate.

I’m aerobically poor indeed. These days, I’m back to base building and am running around 4 easy miles every day by run-walking while keeping my HR under 70%. I can run a 5K or 10K continuously but my HR usually goes to 90% within a mile no matter how slowly (and if so necessarily in poor form) I run, so I’m focusing on trying to run easy in good form while increasing my mileage, but that means I have to intermittently walk. I indeed do strides at around 7’ pace (reasonably aggressive for me) the last few run intervals.

Another near-term aerobic goal of mine is to be fastest at 10K while continuously running. Right now, I can run-walk a 10K at faster than 9’30” average pace (including the walk portions) but the fastest I’ve continuously run 10K is 10’ pace. I don’t have this problem with 5K or less in which I’m fastest while continuously running.