Starting over after a long hiatus

sounds like a normal high school training regimen. check threads for what you're asking--tons of great info on the boards, just gotta sift through it.

I'm in a similar situation as you. I became discouraged with running due to injury and became distracted with other things for 15 years. Now I'm trying to get back into running and have been training for 2 months. I started out just running around the neighborhood and have been gradually working my way into doing track intervals with greater speed and intensity, trying not to injure myself. I'm just turning 36 in 1 month. Maybe the only difference between us is that I have more experience with mile distance as that was my main competitive distance. Your 5K and 10K speed was about what mine was at. I have a log of my training so far and would be happy to share it and bounce around training ideas.

Most of the races around here are 1500m and I've been doing 800m. I was a bit disappointed with my speed back in my youth, so I intend on gradually adding some speed training to my workouts. I do two track interval workouts a week and one longer run. So far I've been doing a mix of 400m and 200m intervals, with the odd 800m or 600m interval thrown in. Each set right now is a bit short of the distance I compete at, but I'm starting with something I can manage at a decent pace with the understanding that I need to get myself used to speed and really push my cardio to the max. So for now the two workouts a week are very similar, but I will work toward separating them into one speed workout with shorter invervals and fast pace, and one workout that is focused on mile endurance, each set being roughly a mile, or slightly more. For my last workout, my sets were 600m,400m,200m, so I just need to add another 400m in the middle for my endurance workout and I will likely also do 3 sets of 4x400m for an endurance workout once I'm back in shape. My fast workouts will likely include 100m,200m,300m, and 400m intervals, but still have to work that out.