Giving up on everything except running, help me get fast!

Itll happen wrote:

I'm training to get as close to a 4-minute mile as possible. I'm almost 20

Look up Joe Rubio's 1500m training, and Colorado Track Club's training as well. That should get you going.

First off, I admire your commitement. You seem to have the drive and determination to break 4 minutes, but I wonder if you have the raw speed.

What is your 400 meter open time? Other PRs? Training history?

There is an advice page on the minimum speed required to run a sub 4 minutes mile. The article suggested that the minimum speed is around 1:51-1:52 for the 800m.

Read this article. It is a good reference for sub 4 minute mile aspirations:

https://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_frank15.html

I will not pretend that I myself am a sub 4 minute miler, but I have looked into this before. I wish you good luck in your training.

My first advice would be to find a coach or training group to keep you in check because it seems like even with a plan you will be too ambitious and fry your legs. Getting better at running takes time so don't be impatient. I'm not sure what your time constraints are or what your previous training is like or what fitness you are in right now, but building mileage is a great place to start. If this week you did 30 miles try to follow this general mileage and workout progression:

37 in 5 days

45 in 6 days

50 in 6 days

55 in 6 days with strides 2-3 days a week

50 in 6 days with strides 2-3 days a week

60 in 7 days with strides 3-4 days a week

55 in 6 or 7 days with 8-12 x ~20 second hill at 85-95% effort and 3 to 4 days later an 8 mile run starting at your normal mileage pace but trying to work down to what you perceive as a little faster than your tempo pace (cut 10-15 seconds per mile; for example 7:00, 6:45, 6:30, 6:15, 6:00, 5:45, 5:30, 5:20)

60 in 6 or 6 days with 10-14 x ~20 second hill at 85-95% effort and 3 to 4 days later a fartlek of 1,2,3,4,3,2,1,2,3,4 minutes on with half that amount of time for recovery at what you feel is about 10-20 seconds slower than your 5k race pace.

65 in 7 days with 10 by 45 second hill and 3 to 4 days later a 6 mile tempo/progression starting at ~5:30 pace and trying to finish around ~5:10 pace while cutting ~5 seconds per mile.

For all of these weeks try to keep your long run 20-25% of your weekly mileage and your easy days really easy. Don't be afraid to run 7:30 pace if you are tired or back off some if you are feeling banged up and don't forget to keep up with some strides before workouts and maybe another time extra in the week.

From here, congrats your base is good enough to start putting in whatever specific training you want to do while keeping mileage similar or slowly building. Don't forget to keep putting in tempos every 2 weeks at least and run easy when you need to.

You got it backwards. Running is a worthless waste of time. Give up on running and focus on fixing the important things in your life.

Speed reserve - test your speed now with sufficient warm up. Get a coach. I think you need about a 12-12.3 FAT to run 4:00 for a mile. Can someone spot me on this?

I’ll be focusing on speed reserve myself because my plan , if my injury ever heals, is to work on sprints 100% and gradually scale up through 400m, mid-d, and eventually 5k/10k. So I’ll already have developed speed reserve. Then the next fundament of my endurance will be cross training and easy mileage

Nice outline, MM... For clarification with what you wrote, if you are assuming his 30 mi/wk is week #1, is your build up intended to represent weeks 2 - 10 in succession or something else, like a series of progressive benchmarks once each level is sustainably maintained (i.e. two weeks in succession)?

You shouldn't give up on everything. Have a balanced like. Chances are you won't stick with this.

You won't get your fastest by giving up everything except for running. You run 30 mpw, if you start training 5 hours a day you'll get injured. Hell even 2 hours of training a day will likely injure you right now. Deemphasize the things you find less important and build up mileage. Put in 50 miles a week for the rest of the year, then 60 miles a week for the rest of the winter. After this, race some 800s and 1500s in open meets. Basically right now you want to follow something like summer of malmo until feb, then something like daniels middle distance plan in the spring.

Just checking, are you Coebra?