I reached my short term goal(sort of) and need more running help now...

[solidj55]

I reached my goal of just being able to run 5 miles, I honestly think I could have done it before but I needed to learn what pace I could run at to get 5 miles. I by no means ran the 5 miles in a good amount of time and I ran it on a flat 1/4 mile track. Now I want to work on my two mile pace/speed. I need help with a routine. I am wanting to decrease my time on my 2-3 mile runs. I was thinking of a routine like this.

Monday
2 mile run(run on a flat 1/4 mile track)

Wednesday
3.6 mile run (cross country and 1/4mile track) This is kinda weird but I will try to explain it. I live exactly 1.3 miles from the track I run at. I leave my front door and have approximately a 50 meter hill to run up and then about 100 meters of flat and then I hit about 20 meters of another hill. Then the rest of the 1.3 mile run is down hill until I get to the track. Once I get to the track I was planning to run 1 mile at the track and the run the 1.3 miles back home all up hill with the exception of the two hills I talked about in the beginning of the run that will now be down hill.

Friday
2 mile run(1mile jog and 1 mile Fartlek Style-Fartlek style mean 100meter slow, 100 meter moderate, 100 meter sprint, etc for a mile)

What do you guys think???

 

[skaman607]

I think you should run less on th etrack, because the hills will help yo ua lot better than running on a flat track, I think you should do some hills to increase your speed, and some 400 meter repeats(with about 70 seconds rest inbetween), and some 800 meter repeats (with about 130 seconds rest in between). A sample schedule would look like this:

Monday: 6x400
Tuesday: Recovery run, 2,3,or 4 miles
Wedenesday: Longer recovery run 3,4,or 5 miles
Thursday: Hills depending on how long they are, your 50 meter ones should be about 10x.
Friday: Recovery run
Saturday: 4x800
Sunday: off or recovery run

you can switch different workouts in and out, and try to include a long run (at least 5 miles) in place of one of your hard workouts.

 

[skaman607]

This was designed to help you improve your 2/3 mile time, it will help you with your 5 mile time but not as much.

 

[solidj55]

Do you mean 2 to 3 miles or 2/3 miles. What I was wanting to improve on was the 2 to 3 miles.

Anyone else???

 

[solidj55]

Oh yea, and also on the recovery runs, I assume they are to be slow pace??? And are they supposed to be on the track or cross country or what???

 

[solidj55]

I was thinking of having a day that I run 1/2 mile repeats, one day that I run long distance cross country, one day that I run using the Fartlek method, and one day I run 400m runs.
Something like this.

Mon
6x400m

Wed
3.6 miles cross country

Fri
4x800m repeats

Sat
2 miles(1 mile jog, 1 mile Fartlek)

How what that be???

I have run repeat miles and repeat 1/2 miles in the past when I used to run and they helped a lot. I have also used Fartlek before and it worked well for adding distance and speed. So those are definetly two methods I want to use in my routine. I also figured that the longer distance cross country run would help with endurance as well as running the hills that will be in the run should help build up leg strength so I want to do that as well. What do you think??

 

[solidj55]

Anyone?!?!

 

[solidj55]

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[skaman607]

I meant 2 or 3 miles, yes your recovery run should be slow, and it should be cross-country, and your training schedule looks fine, but you will want to up the mileage as you go along.

 

[solidj55]

Thanks man. I will up the distance every 2-4 weeks depending on how well I respond to what I am doing. On the 400 meter runs I will up them 100 meters every so often. On the cross country run I will up the distance about a half mile every so often.
I will increase the Fartlek by about 400 meters each time and I will increase about 1/2 mile on the Saturday run.