How far can you go with very basic speed?

Zero, Your physical maturity plays into this as well as other things. Upon leaving high school without shaving once, I had PR's of :52/1:55/4:20/9:20. By my soph year in college and now shaving about once or twice a week, I ran :47/1:47/4:02. We did many speed and acceleration drills, but most of the new found speed was a weak boy growing some. Run ignorant of limits. Train like you are going to be great and who knows? Everyone develops differently and at different rates. If you enjoy it, give it your total effort. Don't be concerned with your potential or what anyone thinks is your potential. Good Luck!

Train like you are going to be great and who knows?

Great advice! You get it.

i dont consider endurance anymore limitless than speed, cause if it was limitless wouldnt everyone be running great at distance events?

if you want to be great at any distance(except maybe the marathon) you have to have speed, you cannot go up in distance anymore just because you arent very quick over the shorter distances. for example kenyans can finish fast 5 and 10ks with faster last laps than your 400m personal best and el guerrouj's mile record is 4x your pr in a row. What this means is that you need to be both fast and aerobically fit. work hard to get your 400m time down below 50, or reasonably fast for your specific event, as much as you work at your endurance and stamina, all of which can be improved at this point in your career. my advice would be to do some research on frank horwills and peter coes multipace theory, it will help you train to get fast over 400m and have stamina and endurance for distance running by varying your workouts over 5 different paces depending on your main event. speed is everything so never get too far away from it in your training.

My real problem is that I don't know how to train properly...

I've only really had two coaches in my life, one I stuck with for 4 years, improved, but never really to the level I wanted too... then more recently I am with this coach who gives you a plan, but the way I see it its not enough miles....

like an average week is 2 speed workouts, maybe one of 300's and one of 600's, the rest is easy running with maybe one fast run per week... this accumulates to 40 miles per week tops, where I figure to be better I need to be doing 70+....

I figure maybe all I should do is miles for building a base, and screw the speed just work on a few strides per week, then once your in the competative season one speed per week the rest just miles...

Why is HS PR's of just 25.xx (200m) and 56.6 (400m) considered poor speed for a distance runner?

forgot to add this-

by the way, right now I'm injured, I have a left ankle injury... I am awaiting the results from a bone-scan, I think it may be a stress fracture because I hurt it at the end of June and now were at the end of August...

I haven't run since the end of June, I hurt my ankle during a fast training run and just went into my final race of the season ( it was an out of town meet I had commited to, otherwise I would not have raced) having not run in 8 days cause of the injury and ran a painful 3000m of 9:30 something where realistically I was looking to run in the 8:50's.

put it this way, I had run a 2k time trial the week BEFORE the injury in a relaxed 5:58 with no pacing help, so I believed the 8:50's was realistic.

so here I am wondering about how I will start training again once I get back from injury, who knows when that will be...

as for getting my 400m time <50, well its not that I don't have confidence in myself, but I truly do not expect to ever get much faster than my current PR of 56... I just have a poor leg turnover, or so it seems...

when the top guys in the world can run, I'm just guessing GEB can run a 22 and a 48, maybe faster, a 25 and a 56 doesn't seem so hot now does it.

basic leg speed doesnt really affect your improvement at 400m. by doing some strength work and hill reps you can build enough power to run a faster 400m, while doing drills will help your basic leg speed improve. as far as training, send me an email with what you are training for and when you want to run it as well as your past training and race history at GiattJJ@auburn.edu, and i will give you some input.

I wouldn't consider those times bad at all for a high school distance runner. There have been many top male high school xc runners who had bests in that range or slower who went on to do well in college and beyond.

The easiest and most obvious thing would be to look at your current PR's in the distances that you want to be or have been competitive at plus what you have done to get there. Hey, if you run the 2 mile in 10:30, those PR's could be considered fairly decent. If your HS 2 mile best is 8:55, I don't see anyone worrying about your ability to become national class regardless of your 400 PR..

It is not true that you can't develop your sprint speed, though depending on your event and level of running it might not even matter all that much. It's also not true that your aerobic development has no bounds. If that was so, anyone could be national or world class just by running 250 miles/wk...

"anyone could be worldclass wih 250 mpw"

look at Gerry Lindgren, as he says himself he had very little talent to start with.

If you were to focus on sprinting instead of distance your

speed at 200 would improve. You cannot say that a 25 sec.

200 is your real legspeed.

Try running some fullout 200's and 100's on a slight decline

Prefontaine also said he didn't have much talent. It's crap. Obviously Lindgren had a lot of talent. Also, being able to run 300 mile weeks is a talent unto itself.....

But I digress. To the original poster, just keep running for the next few years. Work on your raw speed with drills, etc., and see how you develop.

Um...that's not VERY slow speed. I doubt I could break 60 in a 400 and I just ran 16:57 for 5k.

Ok I don't think GEB can run a 22 in the 200m. That is Marion Jones speed.

Puberty in College?

I can barely go under 60 and judging by my training I'm ready to dip under 16 for 5K, I'm in HS by the way.

I'm not going to be a world beater at 5000m, but who knows I might be able to get some decent marathons in the future.

I had to kill myself to break 60 and I could run sub 15 for 5k and under 4 for 1500 on a crappy program 35m/week. Your speed should take you a long way my man. You just have to run the same workouts as the big boys if you want the times.

If you are really worried about raw speed try some plyos, hill sprints, squats with light weights, and general light weight work. With the exception of the weights, I think the Moroccans and Kenyans do a lot of that stuff. Jim Ryun used to do a lot of weight work (between intervals).

plyos really do help. I'm slow too, except worse. My 400 pr is just below 60, and I get smoked when we do 200's in practice by guys who run 20 seconds slower than me in the mile. But I started doing plyos this summer, and I'm starting to close the gap a little, even without traditional speedwork. So I recommend plyos, and some light weight training if you are real scrawny.

A huge advantage that I have been employing is that of a road bike with clip on pedals. There is a huge benefit to be had doing the proper workouts on these bikes. You sound like you need a quicker turnover, not necessarily more strength, though that can never be discounted. By learning on the bike to spin freely instead of push up and down, you are teaching yourself to move more from your core. Your core has a sense of being alive and can accept the energy the road smoothly throws at you. There is also the ability to pedal extremely fast, rates like 140-150cycles per minute that 100M runners possibly hit in an all out sprint. It is a type of feeling that someone who had always been a distance runner would not know. The awareness of the fact that you are much smoother at higher speeds on a bike should make you more able to project a world around you while running that is smoother or more focused, and ultimately more efficient. Once your efficiency increases your likely to have some type of breakthrough with your turnover if it is worked on. I believe far too many people discount speed. Many are satisfied that they can run a 400 in 49,50,51,52 etc. seconds. It's a bit dissapointing to see so many unsatisfied runners who are however completely satisfied, or at least show it in their training habits, with their peak speed. It should be recognized that the faster your ability to turnover is, the more efficient you will be at all speeds.