Fast Running Blog

I'm shifting things up a little bit after running my first trail ultra last month, and have decided to take ten weeks and prepare myself for a PR mile, under five minutes.

It's a nice change of pace, though I am challenged in that (a) I don't have a good enough idea of pace to run 110yds in 19 seconds instead of 17 and (b) it's very hard to find a quarter-mile track in Brooklyn.

But it's fun!

Has anyone done anything like this?

(R: recovery, WR: walking recovery, JR: jogging recovery)

Preconditioning 1 (Two Weeks)
   1. 4-6 miles easy
   2. 10x110 in :19, 110 WR
   3. 4x440 in :80, 220 WR
   4. 4 miles easy
   5. 2 miles in 12:00
   6. 12x110 in :19, 110 WR
   7. 4 miles in 26:00
   8. 6-8 miles easy
   9. 16x110 in :19, 110 WR
  10. 3 miles easy
  11. 4x660 in 2:00, 440 WR
  12. 4 miles easy
  13. 3 miles in 18:00
  14. 6 miles easy

Pre-Conditioning 2 (2 Weeks)
   1. 6 miles easy
   2. 12x220 in :39, 220 WR
   3. 2 miles easy/2 miles in 12:00/2 miles easy
   4. 5 miles easy
   5. 10x440 in :85, 220 WR
   6. 5 miles easy
   7. 7 miles in 49:00
   8. 20x110 in :19, 110 JR
   9. 5 miles easy
  10. 6x660 in 2:00, 440 JR
  11. 3 miles easy
  12. 10x110 in :17, 220 JR
  13. 4 miles easy
  14. 9 miles easy

Training 1
   1. 5 miles in 32:30
   2. 5 x (440 in :80, 110 JR, 110 in :17, 440 JR)
   3. 5 miles easy
   4. 16x110 in :18, 110 JR
   5. 6 miles easy
   6. Rest
   7. 9 miles in 63:00

Training 2
   1. 7 miles easy
   2. 880 in 2:35, 440 in :74, 220 in :35... 660 WR between each
   3. 4 miles easy
   4. 2 x (8x110 in :16, 220 R) with 5:00 rest
   5. 3 miles easy
   6. 1 mile easy, 1 mile in 5:30, 1 mile easy, 1 mile in 5:30
   7. 6 miles easy

Training 3
   1. 5 miles in 32:30
   2. 4 x (660 in 1:52, 110 R, 110 in :16, 550 R)
   3. 4 miles easy
   4. 3 miles easy
   5. 4 x (220 in :35, 440 R), 5:00 rest, 0.5 mile time trial
   6. 3 miles easy
   7. 7 miles in 45:00

Training 4
   1. 3 mile easy, 2 miles in 11:45, 2 mile easy
   2. 12x220 in :36, 220 R
   3. 4 miles easy
   4. 3/4 mile in 4:00, 660 R, 880 in 2:35, 660 R
   5. 5 miles easy
   6. 6 x (440 in :78, 110 R, 110 in :16, 110 R)
   7. 6 miles easy

Training 5
   1. 9 miles in 63:00
   2. 3x880 in 2:35, 660 R
   3. 5 miles easy
   4. 1.5 miles in 8:15
   5. 4 miles easy
   6. Rest
   7. 2 x 0.75 miles in 4:00, 880 R

Sharpening 1
   1. 9 miles easy
   2. 10x440 in :78, 440 R
   3. 4 miles easy
   4. 3 miles easy
   5. 0.75 miles in 3:45, 10:00 R, 880 in 2:30
   6. 5 miles easy
   7. 6 miles in 38:00

Sharpening 2
   1. 6 miles easy
   2. 5x440 in :72, 440 WR
   3. 3 miles easy
   4. 12x110 in :18, 110 R (not too fast!)
   5. Rest
   6. 2 miles easy
   7. FIVE MINUTE MILE TIME

Looks like fun!  I haven't trained for the mile since high school, so can't be too much of help.  It does seem a little odd that the only 880's you ever do are 2:35 pace (except one in the sharpening week), none done at your goal race pace.  I would consider doing the Training week 5 3x880 as a sort of progression (try 2:35, 2:32, 2:29).  Might help your confidence come race day.

Does anyone have any expert opinion on whether I can/should add a weekend long run to this training regimen?

My goal is to get a mile PR, but I do very much enjoy 15+ mile runs and would miss them if I had to cut them out for three months. Will they work against the speed training I've described above?

I did the 110yd sprints last night on a mostly-deserted and completely car-free little street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Tonight I have a line on a 400m parks department track about 1.5 miles south of me... hopefully a workable place to run quarter-mile repeats!

Runners often debate about whether you should focus on strength (basically, endurance) or speed. Lots of that kind of discussion has occurred in this forum, and many here tend to believe that speed will come once the endurance is in place.

Anyway, this debate will probably always go on. My personal opinion is that you should do whatever you enjoy but that the best all-around results (whether you're training for a mile or a marathon) will come with a combination of both strength and speed. I certainly don't think a 15-mile run will hurt your speed (unless that's all you do), and I think track intervals will help your endurance.

Thanks for the advice.

I managed to find a completely deserted rubberized 400m track to do my quarter miles on last night, which is very difficult to do in NYC. Apparently in all of west Brooklyn, only me and one other guy were interested in speed work, so we had the Red Hook track all to ourselves.

I would be pretty hard pressed to get a mile PR (4:19 when I was 18 -- stopped running shortly afterwards), however, 2 years ago at the age of 38 I ran an all out 5:09 by myself at the track. I had done no speed work outside of AT/LT runs about once every 10 days. I'm not suggesting that you do that instead of your plan, but I think if you want to extend the easy runs and make them longer, you'll be fine. I think had I followed a plan for a mile I could have closed on a sub 4:45, maybe approaching 4:30. The problem with a 15 miler though is that its going to suck more out of you. The point of those easy runs is much akin to a recovery run for a marathoner. Where your key run might be a 20 miler, or a tempo run, in this workout the keys are the repeats and intervals .... so when it says 5-7 easy, it means super easy and that is your recovery day. So your distance should be dictated by feel.

Thanks for the advice. I don't have a proper mile PR (I was very ill all throughout high school, and never ran faster than a 8:30 or something thereabouts when forced to do the mile test in gym class), but I calculated that I should've at one point been near 5:09 based on my marathon PR.

http://www.liebreich.com/LDC/HTML/Various/RunCalculator.html

Running things through this calculator implies that a 4:59 mile will be just slightly more impressive than any run I've ever done. Which is fine; the fun is to stretch myself in an unfamiliar distance and see what's possible.

Too bad I don't live in Brooklyn. One of my goals is to break 5:00 in a mile again.

It's been a fun training schedule, though I'm only a week in. The two mile yesterday was brutal in the 100 degree heat.

How old are you? I've found that as I've gotten older the heat effects me more and more, although it seems the humidity is the real crusher for me. You might want to check into how heat/humidity can effect times. I know for a marathon it has a solid effect, especially at those temps, not sure how it translates to shorter distances and interval work as much.

I'm 31. I think that I deal pretty well with heat; if I had to guesstimate I would say that I could've gone 10 seconds per mile faster with the same perceived effort had it been 80 instead of 100.

Having a lot of fun with the training so far.

Does anyone know of any "predictive" workouts? Perhaps 3/4 of a mile, or 1/2 mile repeats? Quarters?

I ran 6 x (660yds/440yds jogging recovery) last night. I ran the first one in 1:50 with visions of continuing and making it a full 3/4 mile at goal pace, but I chickened out and ran the workout as scheduled.

Goal pace 660yds would be 1:52.5, and goal pace 1320yds (3/4 mile) would be 3:45. Somewhat intimidating.

Hammer out a quarter or half full tilt. Go to http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/training1.htm then go to the running calculator, enter your time, see what it predicts for the mile.

I did read some stuff about predictive workouts to determine if you're capable of cracking a 4:00 mile. The classic indictive workout was listed as 10x400 meters in 60 seconds with 60 seconds rest. I would assume for a 5 minute mile you'd do them in 1:15, I just don't know if your rest should remain 60 seconds or you should bump it to the equivalent 1:15 rest. My guess would be that you do the recovery equal to the split. Maybe give this page a read as it might give you some other workout ideas:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2401737

Great, thanks for the tip. Last week I was supposed to do 10x400 with a half-lap walking recovery between, in 85 seconds per lap. I chose to up the pace, and did them in 77,76,76,76,76,77,78,76,75,73 seconds. The rest was much longer than 75 seconds, though, probably closer to 150 seconds.

Last night was a challenging, somewhat disappointing workout on the track.

I did 4 x (220yds / 440yds jogging recovery), then five minutes rest, then a half mile time trial. I set a goal of 2:20.

The 220s went fine at 34, 35, 33, 32. My jogging rest lap took about 2:10 to 2:20 each time. I felt pretty strong and zippy.

In the half mile, though, I failed to drive the pace hard enough, and finished feeling I had quite a bit left in the tank. My time was 2:22.9 (self-timed, carrying a stopwatch around the track in my left hand, which is likely not the most accurate method in the world). I suspect I let my stride rate drop after the adrenaline of the first half lap, and this let me "slump" a bit and get down off my toes.

It's frustrating, since this is the first time goal I've failed to hit in this training program, but it is encouraging that I felt I had so much left at the end of a half mile at that pace. If I can extend 71s laps to 3/4 of a mile, I think I'm in excellent shape to go comfortable under five minutes for my mile.

Any tips or drills for keeping stride rate up?

In my experiences I've found that in the 1/2 and the mile especially the 3rd 1/4 of the race is the important one. Its usually where you start to fade off. Although you need to forget about it until you get there (otherwise you'll run your first 1/2 of the distance incorrectly), when you cross the 1/2 point of the race, you need to really concentrate and dig down to press through this portion of the race. Brain Training for Runners has some form tips to concentrate on when you do every run. I've found the most helpful ones are leaning forward from the ankles, pulling the road, naval to spine, and squeezing the glutes. Go to your nearest larger book store and spend 15 minutes reading over this section. You can also do some drill work listed in the book as well to improve stride form and leg drive. Its a book I highly recommend for any runner who is even moderately serious.

Looks like a very interesting book (at least, the portions excerpted on Google.books does).

Thanks for the tip!

Is a half-mile time trial on the track very rough on the body?

I don't have any time trials in my upcoming weeks on the training schedule, but I would like to retry this and get a better time. Am I going to invite injury by doing so, or is this such a short piece of running that I can add it to the beginning of an upcoming track workout?

It shouldn't be. At the same time, if you're planning on hitting a full out half-mile time trial, I wouldn't plan a whole lot else for the day in terms of speed work. If you can get someone to do it with you it would be good. If you're faster than other people you know, get 2 people together and have 1 pace you through the 1st half and the other pace you through the 2nd half. Be sure to really focus on the 3rd 200 meters of the trial, usually adrenaline will pull you through the final 200 meters unless you've completely shot yourself prior.

I had a somewhat discouraging 1.5 mile training run yesterday that was supposed to be in 8:15 but ended up 8:25.
It felt like an OK run at the time, but it had to be done on city sidewalks (dodging pedestrians, with some hill thrown in, and without knowing intermediate distances to judge pace).

Overall I feel a bit stale, and had another stale run on Saturday which was 3 x .5 miles at 2:35. Again, no intermediate marks since it was point to point (on the Central Park reservoir jogging path).

I'm feeling a bit stupid for not just taking three or four days completely off surrounding my wedding (which was Saturday). Perhaps completely off today and tomorrow, before 2 x .75 miles in 4:00 on the track (with two jogging laps between as rest).

My goal is to run my mile before the end of this month, so I'm wary of putting in too much rest. I don't feet much spring in my legs in the past week; I'm not sure what I ought to feel like doing this sort of training, and don't want to over-react to a bad workout or two.

Jeffrey:

This calculator assumes the lack of proper marathon endurance. I put in 2:27:46 from Top of Utah which I think is about of what I would run on a normal honest course when in good shape at sea level, and it tells me it is worth a 4:19 mile. A 4:19 miler could be trained to run 2:16 marathon if not faster! My best mile is only 4:42.

Regarding the schedule. The magic is not in the schedule. It is in responding to the current needs of your body from day to day, which the schedule cannot possibly predict.

What I would recommend. Run time trials in the following distances: 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m, and the mile itself. The curve for a 5:00 mile would be about 15.0, 30.0, 64.0, and 2:20. See where you fall off the curve. That should be about the length of your interval, so e.g you can run a quarter in 64, but your 800 is only 2:30, that means your workouts should be something like 4x600 in 1:52 with full rest. If you can do 100 in 15, but not 200 in 30, then the workouts should be 5x150 in 22.5. If you fall off at 100 meters, your  hope is hill sprints and some form of PT to correct form imbalances, but 5:00 mile is next to impossible if 100 m is much slower than 15.0.

Another test - find somebody who can run 5:00 pace without much struggle for at least couple of miles and have him pace you. Run with him until you cannot. How far did you make and what made you slow down? Wearing an HRM can provide some clues, but also pay attention to how you felt. The breakdown point minus 200 meters can be used as the starting interval - do 3 of those with full rest for a couple of weeks, then retest and increase the distance if you did better. We are, of course, assuming that you will not make it to the mile but will make it past 500 meters, otherwise different methods need to be used to extend 5:00 pace stamina.

A good workout also is to run a full mile in 5:00 with breaks of your choice to start. Then reduce the breaks until you do not need them.

Sasha:

Thanks very much for the advice!

I ended up running my mile time trial the day before I went off for my honeymoon, on a day with gale-force winds. I just kept falling further and further off pace, and ended up at 5:09 and quite discouraged. It was a bad day with bad weather, but I feel that even on an ideal day I still would have fallen short of my 5:00 goal.

I've hooked up with a running club here in Brooklyn, and found someone who ran a 4:52 at the most recent Fifth Avenue Mile, so I am hoping to ask him to pace me at least for the first two laps.

As for the time trials, I ran 800m in 2:22 during my 3 month training schedule, and suspect that that is where I'm falling off the curve. The only time targets I failed to hit were 800m and 1200m workouts.

I will try to do 600m repeats. At this point I'm almost three weeks past my track training, so it will take a week or two on the track to get back to some semblance of fitness. (All that I've done in the interim is easy-to-MP miles.) I'll also try to do a 5:00 mile split in half, then move up to 1200m / break / 400m at 5:00 pace. Once I've got that, I feel I'll be knocking on the door.

In the vein of a mile at 5:00 pace, yesterday was 2 x (4 x 400m in :75 or less, :90 rest), with 15:00 between sets of four.

Times were pretty comfortable at 73,72,72,72,74,71,73,71. Next up is 800m time trial Thursday, see if that's the weak point.