As a female miler, is my strength-to-weight ratio a barrier? What sort of weights can 5:00 or faster ladies lift?

Broadly speaking people disagree on what is right. On the one hand you see videos of people like Konstanze Klosterhalfen lifting heavy, or the Bowerman women lifting heavy. On the flip side, I've worked with two women who have broken 4:20 in the mile who just to high intensity weight circuits. Honestly, one of them would struggle to squat 30-40kg but they still are what, top 30 or something all time in the mile.

Anyway, looking at you, if you can deadlift 125% of bodyweight and bench 75% that is moooore than enough. You want to break 5min for the mile quit worrying about arbitrary weight amounts and get out there and run. You should be talking with a coach on improving your speed work and mileage both. Mileage and speed. By 45 mpw you should be good (know even more athletes doing 43-50mpw who went sub 4:35) and then it's all about the track workouts.

*****Just PLEASE make sure you are also eating enough especially as you increase mileage and intensity of workouts**** 99lbs for 5ft, even though short, is still not much wiggle room at all. Again, the sub 4:20 milers were both short women but if they had dropped sub 100lbs we would have been quite worried. 105lbs for a 5ft 2 athlete was our "okkkkie go home and pig out for the next while" weight. Stress fractures are no joke.

My goal weight is 102lbs by the end of this month, that 99 was documented 2 weeks ago so I hope I have gained a lb of muscle since. I run for 40 to 60 minutes each day and lift for 10 to 20 minutes each day. 2.5kcal is my avg daily intake which seems about right for a woman my size looking to gain mostly muscle? My aerobic is hopeless so I’m definitely going to have to get my stomach used to eating 3k+ cals as I up my mileage!

What makes you so certain to say that deadlifts or squat constitute running strength? You should measure your "strength" by sprinting and maybe a vertical jump and tell us those results. If anyone is going to reply with, but sprinting doesn't have much correlation with middle distance. Well then neither does weightlifting.

14.4 100m

8.3 60m

I do pure speed 2x a week!

Vertical leap, I have no idea. I can hurdle 30” barriers but I doubt that’s relevant because it’s with a running start.

36” * sorry

Good to hear on the nutrition front.

What's your week looking like structurally? So you're lifting everyday, running everyday, speed training 2x a week?

What are you doing for those workouts?

I'd personally switch to doing weight circuits 1-2 x a week for 30-40min instead of daily at 20min.

Personally I'd go with:

Monday - track: fast or medium.

Tuesday: easy run and 30-40min weights.

Wednesday: speed

Thursday: easy run (if second weights put in here)

Friday: rest day

Saturday: tempo or longer medium pace

Sunday: long run. So if you're running 40min every day go 65-70min this one.

Questions are: what workouts you doing currently, and also ballpark on age. Eg are you a high school athlete who is gonna cut time easy and make big gains or are you already an adult getting into running in your 30s or 40s or something. Sub 5 mile gonna be attainable for both but different challenge in other ways.

Strength fine wrote:

Good to hear on the nutrition front.

What's your week looking like structurally? So you're lifting everyday, running everyday, speed training 2x a week?

What are you doing for those workouts?

She is a well-known forum user, so I'll help you out a bit.

Mid-20s female, PRs in May were:

800m 2:38

1600m 5:57

5000m: 21:30

Some goals are 20 min 5k, sub 60 400m. Has been naturally speedy (fastest kid on playground), but weak endurance. Improved quite a lot since May, as she can now run 5:35 mile.

What does this tell us? She has plenty of fast-twitch fibers, She dedicates 2 sessions a week to sprinting because that's fun for her.

What does she need? Aerobic conditioning. She runs extremely fast of 30-35 mpw, imagine what she could do with real, aerobic mileage and plenty of tempos and longer intervals. Tinman would probably cut all the speed work, as she is naturally speedy and it's a waste of time as improvements there are quite limited and add a longer tempo run every week, and a CV interval session of 4-5x1000 @10k pace every week. Both followed with something like 4x30sec hill or 4x200 both at mile effort/pace. Then add a lot of easy aerobic running to build mitochondria, strengthen her heart etc which can be followed up with some moderate striders to loosen up her legs and keep the speed.

What happens after half a year? Ta-da, she will run very close to 5 min mile and easily break 19 in a 5k.

What I forgot:

Long run and tempo run should ALWAYS be over hilly terrain, preferably on trails.

Easy runs should be sometimes flat, sometimes hilly and instead of striders could do stuff like 5-10x10-15s hill sprints.

That is the MOST specific strength work she can do. In the gym, lunges and deadlifts are probably more useful for running than squats as they mimic the movement better. The gym training that NOP are doing is for the last 1-2% and a strong finishing kick, to keep up form and strength at the end of a race. She doesn't need that yet, what she needs is a better average cruising pace during a mile or 5k that would massively drop her time - that comes from aerobic conditioning.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

What I forgot:

Long run and tempo run should ALWAYS be over hilly terrain, preferably on trails.

I don't know where you come from, but doing your tempo on trails seems like a very bad Idea. If you are not training for a trail race, it is not specific to the race surface on which you will be racing. On most trails it would be very difficult to run fast, and attempting to go any faster than say 7:00 miles makes it very easy to twist an ankle.

You seem to make alot of broad, general statements: using ALWAYS alot, when very very few training aspects should be described this way.

I do agree with the contribution about the specific weight work, for the most part. There is a study showing that quarter squats are better than full squats for developing speed and explosiveness, because they are more specific to the motion.

https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/humo/17/1/article-p43.xml

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

What I forgot:

Long run and tempo run should ALWAYS be over hilly terrain, preferably on trails.

Easy runs should be sometimes flat, sometimes hilly and instead of striders could do stuff like 5-10x10-15s hill sprints.

That is the MOST specific strength work she can do. In the gym, lunges and deadlifts are probably more useful for running than squats as they mimic the movement better. The gym training that NOP are doing is for the last 1-2% and a strong finishing kick, to keep up form and strength at the end of a race. She doesn't need that yet, what she needs is a better average cruising pace during a mile or 5k that would massively drop her time - that comes from aerobic conditioning.

Cool. I don't come on here much so didn't know she's a regular.

I'd generally agree with your prescription then. I could be more precise with my definition of speed and medium speed. I'm a big believer in workouts that push your aerobic limits but still have good pace to them. 200 repeats with 200 recovery is so simple but so effective. Start with 12 reps of that and can work your way up to doing 20. Mix that in with stuff like 5x1km @10km pace as you say, and she should see results pretty quick.

Agreed on NOP doing squats n stuff for that top 1%. Lunges improve form a lot, and deadlifts are a fantastic exercise for stability all over your body - back, shoulds, hamstrings, quads.

RE: tempo and long run always being on hilly. That I'd say is a bit more subjective. Plenty of very successful runners who do flat and hilly. Personally I'm inclined to doing all long runs and easy runs on the flat. Hill workouts would be specific sessions. But hey, I think I am very heavy track focused and not looking at roads or XC whatsoever.

epicTCK wrote:

I don't know where you come from, but doing your tempo on trails seems like a very bad Idea. If you are not training for a trail race, it is not specific to the race surface on which you will be racing. On most trails it would be very difficult to run fast, and attempting to go any faster than say 7:00 miles makes it very easy to twist an ankle.

Very good point. With trails I mean soft surfaces. Like Salazar, I'm not a big fan of asphalt and concrete, it beats up my legs so much more than running on soft surfaces. This can be grass, or dirt roads, doesn't have to be difficult technical forest trails.

1) Running on soft surfaces allows you to run both harder and more volume than on hard surfaces.

2) Running on trails strengthens your feet and lower leg muscles in a variety of ways that the steady pounding on pavement or track, where each step is the same, doesn't.

If you run over soft surfaces, and then for example run a mile at a road at the end, you will go much faster and it will feel very easy. Same is true for racing - if you do lots of training on trails, you will still race fast on the track and on asphalt.

We are talking here about a tempo run and not mile-paced intervals or faster. A tempo run is comfortable, it might be 5 min/mile pace for Rupp and Farah, 6 min/mile pace for most males here and 7 min/mile for OP. At this pace, you can still run fairly relaxed on soft surfaces and tempo runs are primarily targeting the aerobic system/heart.

An exception is marathon running, where you need to prepare the legs for the pounding. But in a mile or 5k, I don't see the need to train hard runs on hard surfaces and risk injury outside of a hard weekly track session.

Hi again. Sorry for the late reply, my internet has been down. Thank you LateRunnerPhil for filling everybody in, I had no idea anybody paid attention to me on these forums. ??

So yes, I do lift weights most days a week but I only approach 90% of my max lifts once a week. So my idea of doing 10-20 mins of daily weights would actually be doing something like 6x25 5kg curls on each arm or something like 6x20 squats while holding a 15kg weight overhead. I do this while trying to activate as MANY muscles as possible.

I suppose you cannot really call that proper “weight training” but more low-effort muscular endurance training. I like to think of it as “building a muscular base” so to speak so that when I do lift heavy (which I do 2x a week - one session dedicated to lower body and one dedicated to upper body) I can recruit more muscle fibres.

TL;DR: yes, I lift every day but very lightly and rarely go all out.

My running plan looks like this:

M 6x60 in 8.5-9.0 with 3 min rest then 5 miles easy 9:00 pace

T 10x400 sub 6 pace - 1 mile wu/cd

W 8 miles moderate 7:50-8:10 pace

T 6 miles 8:20 pace

F 8x150m in sub 25 with 60-90s rest, 3 miles easy 9:30 pace, 8x100m in sub 16 with 45s rest

S 7 miles 9:00 pace

S 12 miles 8:40 pace

M off

T 20 minute tempo 6:50 pace then 4x200 all in sub 35 (2.5 min rest)

Every cycle I either do 8-12x300 at 800 pace OR 8-12x400 at mile pace. I know my endurance has improved since the start of the year because when I used to run 10x400(60s rest) mile workout, I would do the first rep in 85 and my times throughout the workout would deteriorate down to 90 secs.

Today, I did 10x400 and started in 90 and split 85 on my LAST rep so I am DEFINITELY getting better at being able to negative split which IMO requires good endurance. I have always been better anaerobically, when racing the mile (goal: 5:30) I used to always rely on my anaerobic/speed but now I can rely on BOTH my aerobic AND anaerobic. Although, compared to even mediocre endurance athletes my endurance still sucks quite a bit so from now until christmas, my goal is getting to 50 mpw injury free!

PRs:

Raced a 5k in 20:47 but two weeks before time trialed a 19:43 3 mile so maybe I underperformed.