RUN FASTER: How to Improve Your 1.5 Mile Run Time
Mar 03, 2024
The 1.5-mile time trial is a common assessment in law enforcement. This running event tests your aerobic endurance, an attribute linked to not only good health but effectiveness in the field. Sometimes you’ll have to run to the problem before you can solve it.
Below you will find 3 tips to train smarter so you can run faster.
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Progressive Overload
Each week of training should progress you closer and closer to your goal. To do this there are many variables to take into consideration: duration, distance, pace, and rest intervals. Any one of these can be modified to progress and ensure you continue to improve.
Some examples of this include:
- Increasing your long, slow distance run from 3-miles to 3.33-miles.
- Decreasing your rest in between intervals from 5-minutes down to 4.5-minutes.
- Speeding up your pace from a 9:30 per mile to a 9:15 per mile.
There should be some kind of progression over time.
Important note: it is generally recommended not to increase duration or distance by more than 10% from week-to-week. Put another way, weekly volume should not increase by more than 10% from week-to-week. Any increases more than this may elevate your risk of overuse injury.
There are a number of training methods that can be used, and all can be progressed in a logical manner, including tempos, fartleks, intervals, and zone 2. Regardless of the method, progressive overload can be achieved.
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Slow Down to Go Fast
Running at a lower intensity, particularly in the 60-70% HRmax range, has a number of physiological benefits that will ultimately improve your speed in the 1.5-mile assessment. This is at a pace in which you could maintain a conversation during the activity, speaking in sentences instead of only a word or two at a time.
This intensity, commonly referred to as “Zone 2”, allows chambers of your heart to completely fill up with blood. As opposed to higher intensities, with heart rates that are so fast your heart doesn’t have time to completely fill. This filling of the chambers stretches the walls of the heart and, over time, increases the amount of blood your heart ejects with each beat. This is called increased stroke volume.
CLICK HERE FOR 1.5 MILE RUN IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS
Why does it matter?
Well, with an increase in stroke volume, your heart can circulate more blood with each beat which means more oxygen is being transported to the working muscles and more waste products are being dumped off into the lungs for exhalation. Basically, you’re capable of doing more work without increasing your heart rate. This is also the reason for lower resting heart rates commonly seen in endurance athletes.
Additionally, training in this lower intensity zone will increase mitochondrial density and capillary bed proliferation. Meaning, you’ll have more “energy-makers” in the working muscles, and you’ll have more blood vessels to deliver oxygen and remove waste products.
Simply put, don’t forget to run slow.
CLICK HERE FOR 1.5 MILE RUN IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS
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Set Your Goal, Run Your Goal, Reduce The Rest
A very effective method for increasing your speed in the 1.5-mile run is to first test your 1.5-mile run. Based on those results, set a reasonable goal for yourself. Say during initial testing you run it in 12-minutes (8:00/mile). A good goal may be 11:15 (7:30/mile), depending on your training status.
For an 11:15 mile-and-a-half, your half-mile time should be 3:45. With this information, on a speed day, run a half mile in 3:45. If you cannot then your goal is likely too hefty. Slow up your goal pace and try again. After you run the first half mile, rest as needed to do it again. After running the second half mile in 3:45, once more, rest as needed to do it a final time. If it was tough but you were able to keep your goal pace throughout then you have a good goal.
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Now here is the trick: each interval day moving forward, decrease the rest between those intervals, if only by 10 seconds. Over time, with this speed work, your zone 2 work, and other training methods you’re continuing to progress, you’ll gradually reduce that rest time down to zero and you’ve reached your goal.
The only thing to do after that is set a new goal.
The 1.5-mile test doesn’t have to be something you dread. With proper training and consistent, hard work, you can make the test your ally and yourself an asset.
CLICK HERE FOR 1.5 MILE RUN IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS
