re: Advice for 1 mile - Speed

Just curious, what are his PRs in those two events? My 12 yr old son runs both 1600 and 3200 for his track team. Recording his splits last season during training, as well as at meets, really highlighted his lack of discipline. He had a pretty goo aerobic base, and descent sprint speed since he's taller than most everyone else. He was running a rather solid first two 400s, with a lousy third 400, and a blistering last 400. Stress the importance of consistency in his training on days he does speed work. My son was able to knock off a good ten seconds or so by just becoming more disciplined.

That's a really good 1 mile time. Depending on where you guys live, that should put him solid in the 2nd tier of runners. There are going to be some over trained kids out there that run a sub-5:30. If he hasn't been on a track yet, which I assume he did during his tryouts, I would try to get him on one this weekend, even if it's only to run a couple of slow laps. a 400M track can be pretty intimidating to a kid who has never ran on one. Good luck to your boy. Hope he has fun and keep us posted how he does.

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Cool stuff. My specialty was the 3200.

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I don’t think I knew this. I was at a very small school and ran 1600, 3200, and 4x800 but 3200 was my best. Wish I would have stuck with it past 9th grade cause I think I could have been decent.

It will be easier for him to cut his teeth in the 3200. Far fewer kids run it compared to the 1600 because they want to. Easier to train for as well since it will be more about building and sustaining aerobic base. In case you coach him up a little on the side, a general rule of thumb is that you should be doing speed work at 1/4 the distance of your race. So you may want to shoot to have him run more 800m than 200m and 400m.

He ran a 13:30 in the 3200m at practice today first time running on a track.

I'd say that's pretty damn good!

We’re in St Tammany. Looking at last years parish championship you’d have to run low 11s in the 3200.

7th grade

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What grade is he in though?

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We're in St Tammany also, but my boy is still in the middle school division. Didn't know any of the schools out here had that big of a pool to draw from in track. I'm assuming those were either grade times. I'm also willing to bet they had a pretty good distance between the winners and the second group.

Everything in this post is true. A mile is absolutely not a sprint. And if you do have to sprint to run a 6-7 minute mile pace, you frankly shouldn’t be wasting your time on trying to be a competitive distance runner and should stick to doing it as a hobby