Rotich the Rotich wrote:
A 5:40 mile should be enough, but if you can work your way down, anything faster is better. You’ve got good strength already, so I don’t think it’s bad that you’re deciding to focus on your speed.
Slow twitch or fast, I’m assuming you can at least run a 35 second 200. If you can already do that, I think a good goal would be to extend that as far as you can. Build a foundation around that pace and that’ll help you begin to develop proper speed.
If that doesn’t sound realistic, a 6:00 mile might just be enough to squeeze you under.
Building off of this a bit, I had been focusing on half marathons and up, and I tried one of the 10K plans from Daniels Running Formula this summer, and I think that was a good way to improve my speed. There are four different phases- after the base phase, Phase II is six weeks with a mile pace workout / tempo workout / long run every week, then Phase III switches over to 5K pace workout / tempo workout / long run- I hadn't done 200m or 400m repeats at mile pace in a long time, so that made it fresh in a way that was helpful.
I don't know how many you could manage at 35s, but if you tried hitting 8x200 at 47s to start (your current mile fitness) and see if those come down to 43s after a couple weeks. Then start mixing in some 400's (three sets of 200/200/400 was a good one from this summer) and try to maintain the same pace.