How to Run a Faster 3200m

I run a 13:44 3200m and a 6:18 1600m and I want to run a 11 minute mile what workouts should I do?

Answer by Dominique:

Hi there,
Thanks for your running training question. I am guessing you want to run a 11-min 2 mile?

Well, you are ambitious. I am hoping that you are trying to get there over the next few years, not over the next few weeks. Improvement takes time.

First of all, I plugged your 1 mile time into my Race Conversion Calculator.

Based on your 6:18 1 mile you would have to be able to do a 13:08 2 mile at the moment. Your time is 13:44. So you lose a lot of ground. Why? Your aerobic base is not well developed yet. For your aerobic base to develop you need to do many easy runs and long runs.

Not sure what your longest run is at the moment, but let's say it is 3 miles. Try to build that up to 6-7 miles. Imagine if you are able to do that, how much easier would it be to run only two?

Now, let's get back to the race conversion calculator again and plug in a 2 miler in 11 mins. How fast should your mile time be then? It says 5 min 16. So, you need to become a lot faster as well. You can do this by doing intervals. Lots of 400m, 800m, 1000m-1600m intervals. Not always the same ones, mix them up.

So, let's have a third look at that race conversion calculator and find the times you would have to be able to do a 5:16 1 mile for shorter distances. They are:

200m: 34 secs
400m: 1.12 min
800m: 2.30 min
1km: 3.10 min
etc.

Find out what you are already able to do and what you are not able to do. If your 200m and 400m time are fine, but your 800m is not, then you know that you need to train harder on the longer intervals.

A third ingredient in a good two-miler is tempo runs. They help you increase your lactate acid threshold, which means you will be able to go fast for longer without your legs getting heavy.

I am sure you can improve quite a bit. You are quite a bit away from that 11-min 3200m, but a lot is possible when you train hard and train diligently.