For those who have broken 4:20 in the mile

hello mcfly anyone home wrote:

from sept thru December, you want to avg at least 60 mpw ...now, in college, you would up that to 90-100 to break 410

It varies so much. My college roommate runs about 50-60 miles a week and has went 4:05 so far off of that. I ran my current best of 4:14 off of around 50 miles a week.

Workouts are pretty general to what people have said:

8x400 around 62-64 with 1:30 rest (usally what i would do)

4-5 mile tempos around 5:15-5:25 pace

200's

Strides on in between days, drills, stretching, throw in a little lifting if you want. There are a lot of ways to break 4:20. My senior year in college I did my first mile of the year indoor off of about 60MPW from cross to the start of the season and nothing more than some 200 meter hill repeats and strides. Best bet would be to look at what workouts you were doing when your times have dropped the most and maybe do more of those types/variations/more intense.

[quote]runjesse wrote:

It varies so much. My college roommate runs about 50-60 miles a week and has went 4:05 so far off of that. I ran my current best of 4:14 off of around 50 miles a week.

you guys have alot of natural talent, to run that fast off of fairly light base mileage like that. I ran a 425 mile my senior year in high school, on about 40-50 mpw...

in college I was able to drop to 404 when I started doing the college workouts, which included base training of 80-100 mpw from late Aug to Dec. The strength I got from all those miles, obviously helped me alot during track; but, "one size (of training), does not fit all".

of course i know that the same training for someone else won't provide me with the same results, all i'm trying to do is get a large sample of what has worked for runners to run nder 4:20 and hoping that certain points will be similar and i can try to incoorporate those points into my training

dirtythirty wrote:

of course i know that the same training for someone else won't provide me with the same results, all i'm trying to do is get a large sample of what has worked for runners to run nder 4:20 and hoping that certain points will be similar and i can try to incoorporate those points into my training

get as much mileage in as you can handle between now and track season. build as good an endurance/strength base as you can, without getting injured. until you get under 4 minutes, the mile is more about strength and carrying a pace, than it is 'speed'.

dustman wrote:

I don't get these threads. They make slightly more sense when the times get faster, but it varies to the degree of talent out there. For one guy 4:19 will be impossible, to another it might take 90 mile weeks with a lot of quality, for another it might take 35 a week.

for one guy 4:19 might be impossible sure, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. Also one can look at the postings, read about the persons background, and what it took them to get there, and see their situation as similar. For example if one guy says i ran for 4 years and did this, and only ran such and such, but changed to this and it made all the difference, and someone else is out there reading saying i did the exact same thing and ran similar times, they might see a parallel of themselves in another person. There are plenty of similar types of abilities and runners out there. So these kind of threads can be VERY useful if people provide enough background info on themselves.

I PR'd this season with a 3:58 1500. It was a huge drop as I had been running in the 4:12-4:15 range for the past two seasons. I found what really helped me was running my regular distance runs at a FASTER pace. I know on letsrun you hear about how you should run as easy as you can on days in between hard workouts blah blah blah...For me running the majority of my miles sub 6:00 pace (often faster) got me in great condition. I think if you look at the majority of elite 1500/mile runners, they run their distance runs at pretty fast paces. Before this year the days in between workouts I would run around 7:00 pace, and I stagnated. I'm pretty sure that most guys around the low 4 minute range for the mile do their distance runs at a fairly fast pace, not jogging speed like hadd,jk,whoever advocate.