Mile repeats for a 9:00 3200 runner

I'll take it, thanks.

Lots of bad advice on here. Aside from avoiding the unreasonably difficult workouts suggested on the first page, I would caution you against working out at “goal pace”. If you are a 9:15 3200m runner, doing workouts designed for a 9:00 3200m runner is not going to make you magically improve to that level. Improvement comes from consistently training at a level that matches your current fitness, adapting to that workload, and allowing your fitness to increase from these adaptations.

Furthermore, I would discourage thinking about specific workouts as “fitness indicators.” 5 x 1600 at 4:45 w/ 2 mins rest is a workout that I have seen 8:00 3k runners complete, and 8:40 3k complete. What is the context? Have you run 1:55 for 800, or 2:01? What are your strengths? If the 1:55 guy says he did that workout, I’m much more likely to think he’s ready to break 9 than if the 2:01 guy did. Also, what was your level of fatigue heading in? How many miles had you run in the previous 5 days? How deep did you have to dig in the last rep? All of these things matter so much more than your average time for the workout.

Do you not have a coach? I would hope someone of your ability would have an experienced adult offering some guidance. Please be weary of the phonies on this board. You are much better off buying Jack Daniels running formula and structuring your offseason with his cookie cutter training plan, than piecing together random workouts from LetsRun wannabes.

coach in California wrote:

Caruso > D.Rose! wrote:

If you want to do mile repeats at 3000 pace, you should be able to do 3 of them with very little rest.

If you want to do mile repeats at 5000 pace, you should be able to do about 5 of them with very little rest.

If you want to do mile repeats at 8000 pace, you should be able to do about 8 of them with very little rest.

You see the pattern here?

I see the pattern. The pattern that you do not have a clue

Yeah, I'll second that. Mile repeats for 2 mile (race pace) are advanced and should not be done by a high schooler.

Stick with 400's & 800's and a 4 mile fast continuous run.

"decent rest" is what matters. You could do them all in 4:40 with 5min of rest and it's a speed focused workout or do them with 30 secs of rest and it's endurance/speed endurance maybe LT. So you can't just gloss over the rest interval.

Caruso is not and never was better than Derrick Rose lol

ThreadKiller wrote:

Caruso is not and never was better than Derrick Rose lol

No kidding! No clue why the Lakers didn’t make the trade. Caruso and a 2nd round pick for D Rose seems like a no brainer.

As for the “unreasonably hard workouts suggested” it’s because this OP asked specifically about doing mile repeats. I’m not a fan of mile repeats. I’m not a fan of training at race pace in the preseason. I’m also not a fan of coaches pretending to be high school athletes to ask about a workout they are considering doing or a workout they had one of their athletes do already. OP obviously ain’t a high school kid.

I am a fan of shorter rest because it keeps kids from running their repeats too fast. It also keeps coaches from telling a 9:30 3200 runner they are on track to break 9:00 when the reality is they are nowhere close.

Jerry Maguire wrote:

coach in California wrote:

I see the pattern. The pattern that you do not have a clue

Yeah, I'll second that. Mile repeats for 2 mile (race pace) are advanced and should not be done by a high schooler.

Stick with 400's & 800's and a 4 mile fast continuous run.

The pattern wasn’t to do mile repeats but that the overall volume should be about 1.5-1.75x the distance one can hold continuously at the pace being run. So if you’re doing 400s at 3200 pace someone in high school could reasonably shoot for 12-14 of them, recover in a few days time and have room to increase volume later in their career.

Wow Two people talking about 8 x a mile/1600 for a high school kid. that's a brutal track workout. I wouldn't suggest that. Or Mile repeats off 30 secs recovery for high school. I'd hate to see the suggestions for post college.

FatSlowOldGuy wrote:

Wow Two people talking about 8 x a mile/1600 for a high school kid. that's a brutal track workout. I wouldn't suggest that. Or Mile repeats off 30 secs recovery for high school. I'd hate to see the suggestions for post college.

4 or 5 x mile repeats in 430 to 450 with 8 minutes rest.

the effort here should be fairly comfortable.

if you're going good, churn out a couple of 425 ish miles.

this is to adapt to 430 mile pace.

other workouts with less rest between is for 5 to 10k and cross country adaptation.

you can mix them up, just know what each workout does.

also cycle your training.

like 10 weeks mileage and hills

8 weeks middle distance and tempo quality work

8 weeks sharpen and race...

rest

new program..

haha.

No one knows! And people wonder why good talent doesn't always get developed to the perceived potential.

It's really difficult!

There are less coaches that know how to train good athletes than those who don't!

and there aren't many 9:00 high school 3200 runners to begin with.

Lakers technically have 4 point guards AFTER Rondo now but they are all worse than caruso lol. Benefits of having Lebron run point too I guess I still think they really could make their roster better still.

I was a 15:50 5k-9:40 3200 guy in highschool.

I had one coach who valued speed over everything and we did 4 mile repeats with 5 min rest in between. I would run anywhere from 4:50-5:05.

My other coach would do 5x1600 and we would have 400m jog rest in between the repeats and I would average between 5:00-5:06 with the last one being maybe a tad bit faster. I am more of a fan of the latter training too. and before anyone says it yes I believe I underachieved PR wise based on some of my workouts. But I was almost always competitive with guys who had much faster PR's than me in cross.

Less rest is always the way to go especially for runners who throw in surges a ton when they race

Can I do 1xmile at 1k race pace too?

I would say this would indicate close to 9 flat fitness. I was never that fast in high school but found mile repeats at 5:00 to be very a tough workout when I was in 15:10 and 9:15 shape.

I would say that slower mile repeats (5:05-5:10) off the track with 60 seconds rest and some fast reps at the end (6x200) or something in conjunction with 400, 600, or 800 meter repeats at 1600-3200 pace on the other workout day (or a Fartlek or hills if early in season).

Rather than hit the same pace for each mile, you might start with a slower first mile and cut 5-10 seconds each successive mile. In between the fast cut-down miles run a rest mile 20 seconds faster than than your easy run pace. Keep moving, you shouldn't stand or walk.

The University of Oregon used to run this workout when Bill Dellinger coached and called it In-and-Out Miles. If a runner slowed down on one of the fast miles then they were often yanked and the workout was over, so the key is don't start out too fast or cut-down too fast.

A variation of this workout is In-and-Out 800s.

How many days each week do you have your team do short rest interval work?

retired swimming coach wrote:

How many days each week do you have your team do short rest interval work?

Typically about once every 10 days. I’m a big Jan Olbrecht fan, whom you might be familiar with since you’re a swim coach.

What were your rest periods like in the pool?

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Best advice is that you should not do them the way you think you should do them , lol..

You need two types of intervals ( + easy runs of course) to be sure to do the smartest training for you . One maxVO2 interval 15-20 X 400m at 70 sec and one LT interval 5-8 x 1600m at 5:02 min . Both intervals needs your individual very best rest after every rep and then you just walk easy between until your heartrate is back to 120 bpm. It looks to be too easy to give the desired result but it functions every time. Good luck!

- The magic is on - :)

Why 120 bpm? What is important about that number?

Yes, I do remember reading some of Jan's research. Swimming can do intervals on incredibly short rest (like 5 seconds) because the athletes can stop at the wall and immediately turn around.

For endurance work I would generally use 10-30 seconds rest. Extreme example by best ever male distance team member: 11 x 300 on 3:10 holding 3:00. However, generally would do those repeats on a send-off to yield closer to 30 seconds rest.