On the bright side, 53 says you have enough speed to achieve your goal for 800m, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck.
Your aerobic base needs a lot of work. I’m guessing you aren’t trying out until probably indoor season later this year right?
Make a goal to run sub 4:30 in the mile, and I think you should be at least breaking 2:00 at that point. You should focus on developing your aerobic base and lactate threshold. You can research more in depth how to do this online, but I’ll give you a few pointers that helped me a lot.
- Run more miles. This should be a gradual build, don’t get into anything too quick or you’ll get injured. I think a good goal would be to get to 50-60 mpw consistently. You can afford to go slower on your easy days than you are used to as well.
- Build aerobic strength. For 800m specific training, I love high volume 400s. I’ll do 16-20 of them just shooting to go sub 5:00 pace for every rep off of a 400m jog rest. You probably won’t be ready to do that yet, so start with 6-8 of them and build up as your fitness increases. You should also make an effort to get efficient at tempo running. I’d start with getting to the track or on the treadmill every other week, and trying to run a sub 12:00 3200m. Once you get comfortable with that, you can build to 4000m, 5k and so on until you can comfortably go sub 6:00 pace for 6 miles or so. Then you can dial it down and just try to cover as much ground as you can in 20 minutes.
-Continue working on speed endurance. My favorite rep length for speed endurance is 150m-300m, take as long of rest as you need on these, and try to hit 800m goal pace or faster. It can be 2-3 reps after an easy run, or a dedicated workout where you hit maybe 6-10 reps. I must stress to get adequate rest on these. The goal isn’t the effort of the overall workout, but rep to rep quality.