We ran an all-out mile on the track last night to determine our current fitness. We will use that time for 2 purposes: to set a challenging, yet attainable mile goal time and determine the interval paces to train for that goal. In addition, you can use you current mile time and extrapolate to a longer distance. For example, in order to pass his military fitness test, Justin needs to run 2 miles under 19 minutes. Yesterday Justin ran a 9:06 mile. Plugging that distance into the runners world race time predictor (), he should be able to run 2 miles in 18:58. To make sure he's ready, we need to lower Justin's all-out mile so that a 9:06 isn't as difficult to maintain, and he needs to work on his endurance the rest of the week.
You can use that calculator in reverse. Last year, I wanted to run sub-1:20 in a road half marathon. I felt like my endurance training was adequate, but needed to work on my speed. So I plugged in 1:20 into the predictor, and then I had it spit out the equivalent mile time (5:14) that I'd needed to be capable of running in order to achieve that goal (different than the mile race pace, which is 6:06 per mile). One month before the race, I did a mile time trial to determine my fitness and then did weekly intervals on the track designed to get my fitness to the 5:14 level. One week before the race, I did an all-out mile to see if my speed fitness had progressed, and I ended up running a 5:08, which gave me confidence that I could run a sub 1:20 half marathon. The next week, I ran a 1:19:40 in the mostly flat road half marathon.
For all you endurance trail runners, you need to lower your mile time too! For example, Jim Walmsley, who just set a new course record for the Western States 100, ran a road 10K the week before the big race. He ran 6.2 miles in 31:29, which is 5:03 pace! You can't say ultra runners don't have or need speed!
If you missed last night, do an all-out mile this week and then I'll see you on the track next Tuesday, 7/3/18, at 7 PM!