What ended up making you really fast?

Consistency is definitely key. And 5 months is solid, but not as consistent as years.

What were you doing 5 months ago? How long had you been doing it?

And what kind of lack of improvement are you experiencing? Races during those 5 months? Just a general feeling?

Also, what are future short and long term goals?

Answers to those would help us give more specific recommendations for changes.

Consistency is the main thing.

Strides / cutdowns help for speed.

Losing weight / being very light is essential.

Your mileage is good.

Puberty

Huge jump after that.

am-fetta-meeeeeens

Not me personally, but for a lot of people, it’s Nike’s pogo shoes. Boing Boing!

As most people will agree it's mileage. In high school coach kept us at a fairly low mpw, no more than 35-40 if I remember correctly. We hammered every workout though.

Then in college I got up to 70 by sophomore year, then 80 by junior year, then 100 by senior year, and stayed around 100 after college.

High school 3200 PR was ~10:20, which five-and-a-half years later would became my 13.1 pace.

It's all about the mileage and switching up workouts. Try some long run workouts with a progression or the last half at steady state/marathon pace. Even if you're not training for halfs/fulls it will be beneficial.

I was in a funk too, right after college. I was training for the half and running slower times. Once I was told to actually do races during the buildup I stopped stagnating and started PRing again.

Appreciate the responses.

I've been training for 7 months. 5 months of solid mileage as stated...2 months before that of stready progression getting back into it. Before the 7 months, it was probably 2 years of "here and there". No real training, just a 4 mile run when I had time.

I'm in late 20's now. Ran in highschool (4:18 miler), ran in college (mostly hurt, but low 4 teens, low 15's). Ran after college for a few years just having fun (50MPW). Then, as you saw above, I took a couple years of not doing much training.

As far as lack of improvement... I just feel like it's hard to make that big jump. The mileage I'm doing is really solid compared to my history, so was hoping to see some bigger jumps. I have only ran a few races (around 16 flat 5K times). No decrease in fitness or feeling like crap, just not making big strides.

I am sure I just need to be patient and try keeping this up for a couple of years.

Getting into the right race, shattering my PR and then knowing I was capable of doing something I was not sure I ever could. There was no looking back after.

Ca$hclay wrote:

Getting into the right race, shattering my PR and then knowing I was capable of doing something I was not sure I ever could. There was no looking back after.

That was how my breakthrough occurred too.

But it came my senior year of college, which was my fourth year of running and my third year of consistently running 40-55 mpw with occasional higher mile weeks I would’ve run more, but I was new to the sport and injury prone.

So stick with it for a couple of more years.

Testosterone, EPO and living in the mountains. Got about 7% faster at threshold.

-9 hours of sleep no matter what

-doubles 5 - 7 days a week (like 3 miles at 8 - 9 min pace for a 10 flat 2 miler)

- easier easy days and a big increase in miles (went from 7 flat easy days and 30 mpw to 8:15+ and 70 now)

That took me from a 4:50 miler and 11+ 2 miler to a 4:30/10 flat guy in one 6 month period. The easy pace is individual and once you're used to mileage, you can drop it lower, or just go fast and increase mileage, there will be a long while with crappy races, but eventually you'll pop a bubble and run fast times.

Running mountains was my first big jump

From 1 hour 10k on roads to 3:20 marathong with no workouts, just trail-mountain running.

After that it was mileage (70-100 km per week) and intervals 1/2 times a week, that got me from 12 min 3k to 9:09 3k.

Heres My progression so far. Keep in mind I still have senior track season to run and only have time trials thus far.

1600: 5:58-5:42-4:57-4:39

800: 2:49-2:33-2:11-2:04

3200: 13:36-12:46-11:19-10:50

400: 67-59-56-52.5

5000: 24:46-19:27-17:47-16:38

I've got a lot of different reasons for improvement so let me list them from what I think is most to least impactful.

1. Weight Loss. I started freshman year 5'8 176 lbs and am currently 6'1 164 lbs. If I hadn't grown that would be the equivilant of almost 40 lbs lost.

2. Taking it more seriously. Between sophomore and junior year, I decided I wanted to do my best to get good. I started researching how to properly train as a middle distance athlete and started contributing hours of my day to running. Went from like 20 MPW to sometimes over 70 but usually 50-55.

3. Puberty.

4. learning to eat and drink better. I started hydrating better, and started eating a lot of salad, rice, and chicken.

5. As trivial as it sounds, I got in a really bad breakup towards the end of Junior XC, and finally learnt what LR posters mean when they talk about racing "On pure hate". This really was a turning point for me.

just about every great runner does a lot of hill work

i live in the flattest part of the world, so I'll make do with bridges

I started fasting after I gained about 60 pound post college

As a few people have mentioned already:

Sleep

Run a lot

Hills

Run slow on easy days. The top Kenyans, Ethiopians and many of the top non-Africans will run 7:30-8 minute pace on easy days. Now, they’re on dirt at altitude, etc. but these are guys that can run 5 min pace or faster for a marathon and run 2.5-3 mins slower per mile on easy days.

If you’re stagnating ask yourself if you’re sleeping enough, eating enough and eating quality food, and are your easy days too fast? They may feel “easy” but they should be even slower than you think. I remember reading a Canova quote (it may not have been him since he pushes for faster easy days but for some reason his name is in my memory): Americans can’t run faster than the Africans because they can’t run slower than the Africans.

Realistically it was genetics.

What made me better? Miles miles and more miles. Allah blessed me with excellent speed (mid distance runner) with the ability to handle miles and not break down. There’s that genetics coming through again!

Puberty, lifting weights, and mileage was my breakthrough from 18:40 to 16:58 in a year

"Really fast" is relative. I went from 15:54-15:23-14:52-14:28, but more importantly went from 169th in DI XC Region to 13th to 12th, so got very competitive. Other times were 9:28-9:18-9:12-9:07 SC or 9:01-8:48-8:32-8:26 3000m.

Difference was mileage/doubles. Went from 20 miles/week in high school (9:36 3200m) to 40 miles my FR year to 60 miles my SO year to 90 my JR year and 110 mi peak my SR year. By my junior year I was running 4 x 1200m in 3:16 or 3 x 1600m in 4:23 and was finishing long runs at 5:15-5:20/mi pace. I could run 4 miles in under 20:00 any day of the week as a tempo. My morning runs were 4-5 miles of light fartlek. Every run finished fast, as we were a group of 20+ guys hammering.