re: Advice for 1 mile - Speed

13:30 is a fantastic start for a 7th grader.

Overall there’s a few ways to improve his speed. Ultimately it’s a combination of increasing weekly mileage gradually and doing speed workouts. As mentioned earlier, he will need to increase his base mileage initially and worry about speed later in the season; essentially trading one for the other over the course of the season. Becoming a better distance runner over the years will come from increasing base mileage in the off seasons and using more of the season for speed work.

Fartleks are one example of speed work. Other speed workouts I enjoyed were Flying 2’s and soccer. Flying 2’s is where you jog 200m, sprint 200m until you do 1 mile worth. A few sets of those are a great workout. Soccer or any sport like soccer where you’re moving continuously with intermittent bursts is great for a speed workout.

In regards to regular run days, the goal should be to hit consistent mile splits and over the course of a season, to drop that average time.

Biggest hurdle is mental, I’d get him into some youth 5k’s and semi-distance races and let him soak in the social aspects of distance running. It’s inhernelty going to be “less fun” than sprinting in school age,but the culture of distance running can last a life time.

The high school version of myself was a long sprinter (200m/400m/hurdles) and now I do some distance work.

On the technical side, keeping your muscle balance stready through the run I think is the most important at that distance. It’s not obvious, but the key variable is not how fast your legs move, but it’s how much force you impart on the ground,

When we sprint, we pretty naturally put everything we got into thrusting off the pavement and moving forward as fast as possible. When we jog,we pretty much take all of that forward force out of that equation and are just really moving quicker with our normal walking forces.

When we distance run, we need to do more of a slow sprint (slower movements, but maximum force per movement) than a fast jog (quick movement, but not much force with each step).

Hell yeah. That's a damn good time for a Jr High kid. 2nd place kid probably wasn't even out of the turn yet. Hope he's enjoying it and plans on sticking with it.