What ended up making you really fast?

Daltonj800m wrote:

coming of age? wrote:

Yea, you hit puberty dude! It is a coincidence, not a result of supplementary work.

Or maybe doing more than just running helps you get faster. Who would've thought?

supplementary work may have helped your 400 speed, but your 800 times are extremely subpar for your speed, both years.

for people looking to get faster from 800 up, running more is almost always the most important change

at higher levels of running, I believe in my miles. but the change i made, as a hobby jogger, that got me faster was taking a season to drop my miles and run really quality speed work. 200s between 400 and 800 pace. 400s at 800 to 1600 pace. and 800s at mile to 3k pace. I cut my mileage in half, or more and focused on this and dropped a minute off my 5k after 10 years of stagnation.

it think hobby joggers get in a routine of a lot of slower miles and have completely lost touch with any real leg speed they ever had. a good dose of mid distance training could do a lot for many of these people.

Daltonj800m wrote:

coming of age? wrote:

Yea, you hit puberty dude! It is a coincidence, not a result of supplementary work.

Or maybe doing more than just running helps you get faster. Who would've thought?

Or maybe not, maybe running more is the answer. Maybe running makes runners faster. Prove to me that doing all this other crap really makes anyone run faster?

I never liked running and I am lazy. The OP is already doing plenty of training but he is not talented. He has read too many threads where people believe you can train to greatness. You can't. I was the fastest in HS and college. When other guys did a long run, I turned around after we were out of site of the coach. If intervals, my hamstring or my achilles hurt so I would get out of doing them. Yet I was able to break 14 while my teammates ran their crappy 14:20s. They were running 80mpw while I was doing 35. They were doing soeedwork while I was watching. Proper training will get you to your Max but not near talented guys' maxes. Talent is everything.

Saturday Long Run? wrote:

As a few people have mentioned already:

Sleep

Run a lot

Hills

So simple yet so true. The magic threesome. Other stuff is important obviously, but these are golden.

I was never fast compared to standards here. 4:30mile 9 flat 3k 16:02 5k 26:40 8k for a guy. However, I dropped all my times by about 20 second per mile when I started to really keep my easy days easy and the hard days hard and stopped trying to run with 15:30 guys when I was in 17:30 shape.

Pushing myself to run with a group of people that were way better than me.

yup, talent trumps all.

I improved a ton, by running more, drinking more, sleeping less. went from 26:40 for 5 mile XC as a frosh in college, to 23:58 5 mile XC (same course) as a senior, drank a lot, slept very little, wouldn't do that now knowing what I know now, but that's the way it was, play hard, party hard. Improved my 2 mile time by a full minute indoors, 9:55 as a frosh, 8:56 as a senior, only ran one race indoors as a senior, then hit the roads. No secret.

I added plyometrics after almost all of my runs. 10-15 minutes of A-Skips, B-Skips, etc. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsXIxsRxFVY). Brought my 3k down to 8:27 from high 8s, 5k down to 14:47 from ~15:30. These times were run during indoor season as a 19 year old sophomore. I was also consistently logging 80-110mpw with doubles most days + easy runs easy + workouts, so hard to identify a sole factor, but the plyos certainly helped my hip flexor strength and form, and I felt much more nimble as an aerobic runner. Very easy to add in to any training program.

Slow d3 runner wrote:

I dropped all my times when I ... stopped trying to run with 15:30 guys when I was in 17:30 shape.

Middle age duffer wrote:

Pushing myself to run with a group of people that were way better than me.

Perfect illustration of why training debates never get resolved. Some thrive on X, other thrive on NOT(X).

Hi.

How high mileage was during competitive season ?

I'm in the base phase and can up my mileage, but I have my season from april to october and not sure about mileage during

that season.

April-October is quite a long season. It would probably serve you better to plan two separate peaks over that time frame than one.

If you can steadily run 90-110mpw until April, I'd recommend bringing the mileage down gradually so you are running ~70 mpw with intensity in June and plan a peaks race for second half of June . Then take a few days off, log 90-100 in July, and do the same for a peak in late sept./oct peak.

Only good genes can make you really fast. If you have no talent, even the best routine may only get you to 20 minutes.

former runner . wrote:

I added plyometrics after almost all of my runs. 10-15 minutes of A-Skips, B-Skips, etc. (

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsXIxsRxFVY

). Brought my 3k down to 8:27 from high 8s, 5k down to 14:47 from ~15:30. These times were run during indoor season as a 19 year old sophomore. I was also consistently logging 80-110mpw with doubles most days + easy runs easy + workouts, so hard to identify a sole factor, but the plyos certainly helped my hip flexor strength and form, and I felt much more nimble as an aerobic runner. Very easy to add in to any training program.

How many days per week for plyos?

Day before or after a workout?

The thing that made me go from a 16:50 guy to a 15:40 guy in HS was treating my body like a machine and my mind like the operator of said machine. You're body can always be better and to assume that you're perfect just the way you are is a huge mistake.

I fueled it properly, made it more efficient, slightly more powerful, made it use energy from all of it's systems, and I dropped about 20lbs. (I went from 155 to 135 so nothing crazy) Doing all of these things made my vessel much faster. I was running about 70 mpw on average fwiw.

Maybe you need to look at a new distance to race?

Sounds like you're still mainly interested in 5k's? Given that you say you're in your late 20's, you might want to focus on some longer races that your age would benefit more.

Also I saw big increases the year AFTER I was up to 70 mpw (granted this was my sophomore year of college so at that age you're getting better just by getting older as well). But usually mileage takes a while to really get "absorbed" into your system.

So my advice is to either just keep doing what your doing, or think of a longer race distance (which can often lead to faster times at shorter races as well).

chrisfudge wrote:

What was it that gave you that big jump?

I know long term consistency is key. Just curious if I'm missing something. I feel like I'm just keeping it going with no large improvement.

I have been running 70 to 80 MPW for the past 5 months

2 workouts/week (threshold intervals + quicker 200's or 5K paced intervals)

1 hefty long run

What I have not been doing much of...

I might do 2 double's a week (maybe), but not many

I have not bumped my mileage higher (90's/100's) even though I've been at 70's/80's for a while

My 3K/5K paced workouts have only been for a month or so. Before that, it was full rest rep work (200s/400s)

No real hard anaerobic work

No real sprint/alactic/hill work

Thoughts? Opinions? Anything that gave you that big change?

I was age 26 and read about Jack Daniels exact paces and ran only six sessions per week at my exact best paces .....when age 27-28 I ran my lifes best races 14:20 / 29:51 at 5 k / 10 k and won the Gothenburg Sylvester race at time 31:30 over 10. 55 km ( a quarter 1/4 of a marathon with a tuff hill in it)

my determination and kick at the end of races

HaHa, the one thing everyone has in common for the reason that they became "really fast" they had been running for an extended period of time.

This thread illustrates how clueless folks are and why there is a need for good coaches. If you understand distance running, success does not come about in one season or even one year. It is from several years of training and building and developing, yes, you might have a break out season and immediately attribute it to the training of that season, but in reality it is the culmination of all that has been done before. And, luckily, you stayed healthy long enough to realize the benefits.

But, go ahead and pretend there is a secret and you broke the code.