improving mile time for 800/1500 runners

Your goal(s) are not out of line with your 800. Improve your 400 and your 800 will improve and then your mile will improve. Easy for me to say. You must be very methodical about your training. You did not mention what you are running for your 70 miles. Did you run any cross country / road races this past fall? If so, what were your times? Are you planning to run indoors? What college did you compete for?

What is the point? Find a job and move on is probably the best advice.

I think it's as easy as just doing more tempo and threshold work. I ran significantly faster at 3k than you, but I could only run 1:58/4:15.

The above poster is right I saying I increase 400 speed and it will come down, but it works the other way as well - improve at 3k/5k and it will come down. I wouldn't increase mileage anymore, but you definitely need to increase your strength in order to run 4:00.

Best of luck.

steve red wrote:

Improve your 400 and your 800 will improve and then your mile will improve.

Not necessarily. Improving your mile time may very well make your 400 worse.

Improving mile time for milers? Hmmm...

well, kid, you certainly sound talented. what type of workouts did you do in college to get into that 1:49/3:48 shape? were you more geared toward the 800? that's what it sounds like.

in college, a runner's workouts and specializations are usually designed for him to compete and score points at championship events. maybe you did longer distance races as part of your training, or maybe to be more rounded, but i'm guessing the overall goal was for you to run the 800, maybe the mile/1500 and a relay, at your confernce meet and try to go onto to NCAAs.

i'm sure if you just focus on the mile, you'll run very fast. pick up some specific workouts and work on your strength early, like 1k reps at 10k-VO2Max, fast tempos, longer long runs, etc.

I'm with the previous poster. It seems more likely you ran a lot of workouts with your 800 as the focus. If the real importance is a better mile mixing mile specific workouts in will solve the problem. It really comes to what is the goal in this season. Be a 1500 guy or an 800 where you already have the confidence.

Flying_Tiger wrote:

I'm with the previous poster. It seems more likely you ran a lot of workouts with your 800 as the focus. If the real importance is a better mile mixing mile specific workouts in will solve the problem. It really comes to what is the goal in this season. Be a 1500 guy or an 800 where you already have the confidence.

Most of the workouts my coach had me do I guess you can consider were geared toward 800 because i was obviously better at it based on pr's. Anaerobic workouts were easier for me and longer aerobic workouts like mile repeats etc were always harder. The more I improve my over distance and aerobic ability the better, But how to do that is a different question.

Repeat 200's and 400'sNot much else you can do outside of lifting and plyometrics.

If you need more strength aerobically, I'd recommend starting with 5x1km with 2 min rest at threshold pace, and eventual get up to 8x1km with 1 min rest at threshold pace(2:55-3:00 for you). Then as you get to more specific workouts come back do the 1ks or a tempo once every 2 weeks or so to stay in touch with it.