It?s so funny to me to think about how things have changed over the years. When I look at myself in the mirror, I wonder how life just takes over and I never realized how much my body has changed so much without me even noticing. As I notice the few extra pounds here and there on my body, my mind drifts back to the younger days when I could run like the wind and not even have a twinge of pain afterwards. I could do strenuous workouts day in and day out and never blink an eyelash. Man, those were the days!
Then I snap back into reality and think, ?Boy, I wonder if I could do that all over again?? ?Naw, I doubt it!? Then a big smile comes over my face when I remember seeing my track coach and the look he had in his eyes when I won my Sectional Track Title, and was going to compete in State Qualifiers. He was so surprised and impressed that I had won, that he didn?t even realize he forgot to stop his watch to see what time I actually ran! Either way, I had run a personal best, and in just 6 weeks went from never running the mile in an organized meet before, to beating all of the competition in my area and was on my way to take on the rest of the State in just over two weeks time.
I started out running the mile in my first meet because I had pulled a hamstring in practice the day before. So, my coach entered me in the mile run to give me a workout instead of putting me in my regular sprinting events like the 400 m and the 200 m. I went out and got a second place finish and ran a 5:12. He was shocked, so I began doing both the sprinting workout and the distance workouts together so that I could run the middle distance mile.
From memory, I will tell you the workout schedule that I used to hopefully help some of you to maybe one day break 5 minutes in the mile. First, I would run 3 miles at a brisk jog and try to reach about 6 and ? minutes a mile to warm up. Then I would stretch. Then, using a mile track, I would start at the 200 Meter mark and do repeats. This means that I would sprint from the 200 Meter mark until the finish line to try my best to hit a specific time. This time would depend on what my goals were for the day and week. Once I had sprinted to the finish, I would jog very slowly back to the 200 meter mark and then sprint again. Normally, I would do this 10 to 15 times, and I would generally try to hit 30 to 35 seconds for each sprint giving me the ability to feel how it was to run half a lap at a 60 second pace.
Once I was finished this, I would normally be pretty tired, and would jog a one mile cool down, and then stretch again before calling it a day. Throughout the week, I would alternate doing a hill workout instead of repeats. By a hill workout, I would find a hill and sprint up it over and over again until I couldn?t move, this usually meant about 20 to 25 times, and on a generally longer hill ranging from 100 to 150 meters.
I hope this workout can help some people to maybe be able to train as a runner, but then maybe add in your own variation of it. If you have another workout that could possibly show great results then by all means, post a comment under this article and I will certainly appreciate it. The results I had while doing this were very good, because I dropped my mile time from 5:12 down to 4:43 in just over 7 track meets, which took place over the course of 8 weeks. So it is a proven workout regimen that could work well for you.
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