Wish I ran in college wrote:
I ran a 4:59.5 1600 in my senior year of HS off of 35-40 MPW. I wasn't fast enough to run in college as a walk-on (I went to a D1 school), so I pretty much quit after graduating. But I stayed active and didn't gain much weight.
A few weeks ago, I got inspired by an Outside magazine article about one guy's successful sub 5 mile run, so I decided to give this another try. The fact that I only ran a sub 5 1600 back then and not the full mile still bugs me. I'll be 33 in a few weeks, which is about the same age as the Outside magazine writer.
The question is, how hard is it to break your HS PR as a 33-34 year old? Approximately how many months or years will this realistically take? Do I have to train as much as I did back then, or can I get away with doing less? Or is it completely out of reach? I ran a 5:59 mile last night (solo time trial, no spikes), so I know that I have a loooong way to go.
The more I plug away at this, the more respect I have for that Outside writer.
I read through that article again, and I find it pretty impressive that he was able to go from zero to a weekly 10 mile run, a weekly 3 mile tempo at 6:15 pace, and a 66 second first lap of a 5:15 mile in just 3-4 months. I don't think most of the freshmen in an average HS XC team could do that.
Anyway, I tried to match what he did, and I'm still not quite there yet despite my previous track experience. Today, I lasted two miles at his 6:15 pace, which turned out to be an all-out effort on the track and not a tempo run. My weekly long run is 5 miles now, and I ran an all-out 67 second 400 in spikes a few days ago to gauge my speed. Ugh, that's still slower than that guy's first lap of the mile.
I'm guessing it'll be relatively easy to get down to 5:30 or so, but once I get into the 5:10 range, those last 10 seconds will be almost impossible to take off.