Best way to lower my 1.5 mile run time. (Read 5820 times)

This exact question has been asked before.

This exact question has been asked before.

I figure it has.  I thought about taking however long to search through all the posts, but figured with a 3 and 2 year old running around, I just have enough time to ask real quick.

Thanks for doing the job for me.

Train for the USMC test.  

Just searching off of google, if the website that I found is accurate, if I were to run a consistantly and finish 3 miles in 22 minutes, take the number of crunches that I did for my recent PT test (60 in a minute) and knowing how many pull ups I did the other day, I would be rated in the 1st class for my age group.

Thanks for the idea though.

Icornelio:

How much physiology do you understand?  This sort of caught my attention and, well, I'll bite the bait and go for it then...

Everything we do in life, we require oxygen.  This is why breathing is more important than eating or even drinking.  And the more demanding the task is (like running FASTER), the more oxygen your body require.  This ability to take in, transport and utilize oxygen id called AEROBIC.  If the task requires above and beyond your body's oxygen consupmtion level, your body needs to "fake" this process and cheat the process and do the task anyways but will have to pay back later.  This process is called ANAEROBIC and the pay-back is called OXYGEN DEBT.  If you sprint flat-out, you can probably run somewhere around 150m or so and then the muscles (legs) will sieze up and, when you stop, you'll be huffing and puffing for some time--this is your body paying back this debt.

1.5 miles is not a test of endurance but if you build some, you'll be able to run it at almost top speed the whole way.  

What Dave said here and how he said it is like, not like me going on and on and on, mumbling away, he said it so simply and nicely.  This pretty much sums up; if you condition yourself AEROBICALLY, you can run at faster pace and still stay within your aerobic capacity, in other words, without creating oxygen debt, and keep on going for quite some time.  This is why elite marathon runners can run 5-minute-mile pace or faster and still chat to other runners around them; they have developed such high aerobic capacity that, running at 5-minute-mile pace, they are totally aerobic. 

So if you understand this, the best way for you to run 1.5 miles, though it is not totally aerobic as Dave had stated, is to bring your oxygen consumption level up higher.  Your oxygen consumption ability is, as I said, your ability to take in, transport and utilize oxygen.  Transport of oxygen is pretty much dependent on your cardio-respiratory system.  This is why your fitness level is sometimes refered with lowering of your resting heart rate; in other words, now your heart had become so strong that it can pump more blood through one cycle of contraction that it doesn't as many beats to take care of the body's needs; hence lowering of your resting HR.  Utilization of oxygen is dependent on various changes in the working muscles such as increase in capillary beds and increase in the number and size of mitochondoria.  All these evidences suggest that you will need high volume of aerobic exercise; in other words, run a lot at easy pace.  Now, this takes some time though; often about 2 to 3 months at least.

Along with it, to run such a short distance as 1.5 miles, you'll need to ability to tolerate oxygen debt (i.e.; ability to exercise anaerobically) as well as the ability to run faster pace comfortably.  A good example is; if you want to run at a 6-minute-mile pace and if your 400m flat out best time is 80 seconds, you only have 10 seconds to spare and it's very difficult to run 400m only 10 seconds slower than your flat out 400 and do it 4 times in a row.  If you improve your 400m time down to 75 seconds, now you have 15 seconds per lap to spare.  At the same time, the reason why it's so hard to continue running at that speed is because your body will get into oxygen debt and, if not trained properly, it hurts and very difficult to go on.  Where as if you train your body to withstand oxygen debt, then, even with all the things equal, you can hang on at that speed a bit longer.  This is where workouts like intervals would come in.

If you go straight into interval training, you will improve your time very quickly and give you an false idea that you are actually getting, what do you call it, money for the bang?  Because it happens rather quickly, like I said, you'll get this illusion that, if I improve this much wihin 2 weeks, if you continue doing this, how much more would I improve in 2 months...???  Well, probably not much more.  There's limit to how much you can improve this side of development (you can't continue running without oxygen) and, if your aerobic base is very low, even though you improve very rapidly, your overall development will stay very low.  You'll need to bring your base up higher and then, on the top of that, put this icing on a cake.  To simply put, you can add "2" on the top of "4" and get "6"; or you can bring the base from "4" to "8" and then add "2" on the top to get "10".  To get that "2" is fairly easy; but to bring that "4" up to "8" is more difficult and takes longer time; but a lot more worthwile over time.

So with this in mind, you probably will receive, and probably have in the other thread, the advice of run long and run easy for some time...  Of course, we always have some ignrant popping out here and there, suggesting to run fast; "Less is Better" "Run as if this is the race" approach.  And that's fine too.  Like Dave said, 1.5 miles is not really a test of endurance and you may not have any intention of improving your general fitness level or aspired to challenge 5k, 10k or beyond later on.  I'm just throwing this out on the table; which approach you take is totally up to you.  Like I said, you may not give a damn what you do after the test and, for that, it may actually be better if you take a quick-fix way and call it a day. 

Well, either way, good luck; and, for this time around, it might be nice if we hear from you whether or not you passed the test or not and how you went about it.  At least, I would like to find out.

Icornelio:

 

**Post from Nobby415**

First off, great break down of everything.

March of 2010 I ran the 1.5 in 12:53.  In 6 months, I was able to drop it down to 11 flat.  I'm 5 points away from maxing everything out.  The only room for improvement is my run time.  Don't worry on whether or not I pass the test, it's whether or not I'll be able to score a 100.  That is the main goal.  Dropping my run time to 9:30 or so will get me there.

I'm normally a big weight guy, but now, I'm trying to include more of a running routine.  Creating a lifting plan is easy, a running program on the other hand, I'm still working on that.  I normally don't have a lower body routine either, but I love the way that my legs feel when I've been training them for a while.  I'm still trying to work a running and lower body routine.  That may take a bit for me to work out.

ic