cant break 60, whats wrong...

don't worry too much about it. work on your strength and endurance. I ran in college with a guy who could not run faster than 62 for an all out 1/4; but his endurance and strength were very good. He could run under 9 for 2 miles, under 14 for 3 miles and 4:13 for a mile. So, work on carrying a faster pace, closer to your optimum.

no sweat wrote:

don't worry too much about it. work on your strength and endurance. I ran in college with a guy who could not run faster than 62 for an all out 1/4; but his endurance and strength were very good. He could run under 9 for 2 miles, under 14 for 3 miles and 4:13 for a mile. So, work on carrying a faster pace, closer to your optimum.

Yeah, ok.

there is no way someone who cant break 62 for 400 can run a 4:13 mile. a 413 mile is like 63 pace. obviously endurance is important but lets not make outrageous claims.

sorry...I meant 60 flat....his best 880 was 202

no sweat wrote:

sorry...I meant 60 flat....his best 880 was 202

i call bs again

nope; true; he was my teammate; back in the mid 70s. His best event was X-C; but the guy never could break 60 for a 1/4 in practice.

thanks, but i know i have run faster so i have the speed, just cant work out why its not there now despite training...

The general rule of thumb for 400 pace, for people who are not 400 specialists, is:

400_time = 2 * 200_time + 4 seconds

If you look at it carefully, from your 120, it would appear that you have slowed to something like 13(100m)/28/64.

A workout like 4 X 200 all out with 10-12 min rest would probably help, as would 2 X 600, but you probably need to do some 60's, some 150's, and some longer things to get that speed back. There's a workout of 6X100 (sprint the straights, walk the turns for recovery) that is VERY hard but often works like magic. But most of the work is all-out speed with full recovery, 80% 400 speed for 600's.

thanks!

no wrote:

there is no way someone who cant break 62 for 400 can run a 4:13 mile. a 413 mile is like 63 pace. obviously endurance is important but lets not make outrageous claims.

It's not outrageous. I also have a 62 PR, but just broke 4:00 yesterday. Of course, the Illinois High School Association timed my mile, but still.....

I call bullshit, world-class athletes cannot run a mile at just over a second slower than their 400m PR.

no wrote:

there is no way someone who cant break 62 for 400 can run a 4:13 mile. a 413 mile is like 63 pace. obviously endurance is important but lets not make outrageous claims.

Yes, let's not make outrageous claims--and I have no idea whether this is one--but also let's not make the mistake of saying rules cannot be broken. An example here would be Eamonn Coughlin, who claims that he never ran a 200 faster than 25, but could kick the last lap of a mile in 50...and THIS one's well documented. Another one would be Geb, with a listed 400 PB of 49-point....yet, he could kick the last 200 of a WC 10000 in 26.

If you coach long enough, you will come across certain milers in particular who can run fast but simply cannot sprint. They just don't seem to have the fast twitch fibers to run a single 400 much faster than their intervals--but they can run at that pace for a long time.

Now, these people are exceptions, and it would be a mistake to base the training for a whole track team off exceptions to the rules. But ther ARE people like this.

why are you running the 400m?

you have no speed get on the roads!

try working on your speed endurance. you already have the basic speed. it doesnt seem you are really going into the well.

scaling back wariner's endurance training (youre 300m goal is 43-44), try running 150m (rather than jw's 200m reps) in 27-28 going on 1:30, using the 50m of turn as the walk recovery. sets would be 5-8. you dont necessarily need to go all out to improve top speed, so dont be surprised if your 120m drops as well. as you'll be sucking some air in the 1' recovery, your overdistance marks up through the mile should come down some also.

Just because someone hasn't run a time doesn't mean they can't. Coughlin most certainly could have gone under 25 when he was running 3:50. Geb's anecdote makes sense, but a lot of those others are crap.

When did Coughlan ever run a 50.xx last lap in a mile race?

Coach D wrote:

The general rule of thumb for 400 pace, for people who are not 400 specialists, is:

400_time = 2 * 200_time + 4 seconds

If you look at it carefully, from your 120, it would appear that you have slowed to something like 13(100m)/28/64.

A workout like 4 X 200 all out with 10-12 min rest would probably help, as would 2 X 600, but you probably need to do some 60's, some 150's, and some longer things to get that speed back. There's a workout of 6X100 (sprint the straights, walk the turns for recovery) that is VERY hard but often works like magic. But most of the work is all-out speed with full recovery, 80% 400 speed for 600's.

Wow that formula is basically dead on for me. Thanks for posting it.

Mtn Dew wrote:

Just because someone hasn't run a time doesn't mean they can't. Coughlin most certainly could have gone under 25 when he was running 3:50. Geb's anecdote makes sense, but a lot of those others are crap.

The comment about Eamonn comes from the section on the mile in the New York Roadrunners Club "Complete Book of Running." I take it that Coughlin himself is something of an expert on how fast he actually ran a 200. Another example here is Steve Cram, with a 400 best of 48.5, yet he ran 1:42-point for 800. Another example is Jeremy Huffman who used to post here, with a conversion from 400 to 800 better than Sebastian Coe's. Of course the reason is not that certain people's endurance is so great (though Cram's certainly was) but that their sprinting is on the slow side, though they have great speed endurance.

Letsrunners always know better, but the fact is that there is a certain type of athlete that can sustain a relatively slow peak sprinting speed for a surprisingly long time. More to the point, just because you can't run a 400 in XX isn't necessarily reason to give up on 800/1500 and become a marathoner because you're "too slow" to be a miler.

Cram could have gone faster and I am sure Coughlin could have too.

On the day when Cram ran his 800m PR had he run a 400m out of the blocks he would have run under 48.5. Same for the 200m in Coughlin's case when he ran 3:50.

Just because they DIDN'T doesn't mean they COULDN'T.