quote:<HR>Originally posted by notjontran:
Not at all! 
I said 3 months because whenever I endeavor to achieve something I always set high goals for myself. Sure, the goals I set might be impossible but they push me to do whatever is necessary to accomplish them. As such I am interested in the structure of training such as proper running form, breathing correctly, nutrition, and the like.
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First of all, I'm glad you didn't take my comment defensively!
You're right; there are quite a few seasoned runners/coaches on this board and their advice is spot-on. For a proper training structure or program or whatever you want to call it, you should spend the first 3 months or so to build up your condition by doing lots of easy running. However, I guess I'm a bit different. You have a clear goal to run 2 miles in 14 minutes or faster and I don't see any reason why you throw that away now (whether it's realistic or unrealistic, you'd let us know in 3 months time). I'll stand what I've written earlier; try to go further or longer (up to 2-hours) while doing at least one day of time trial 2 miles and some easy repeats on alternating weeks. If anything, you should consider inclucing a hill session once a week on the top of that. No bounding or springing or fast/hard hill repeats or anything like that. Just jog down to a long steepish hill (hopefully 300m or more) and run up STRONG, not hecessarily hard or fast, but strongly with a good posture, good knee lift, good arm swing... Just jog down and repeat. Do this for 20~30 minutes or so; then jog back for cool-down. Thiswould strengthen your legs, particularly your quads and ankles, as well as help improve your technique and enable you to run faster without trying to run faster.
I also would like to chip in a bit about this "slow" running deal. I was being a bit sarcastic when I wrote about Walter George and the Finns but it is true; the Finns started this "structured training" in the 1920s and one of the first things they did, during the winter, was to walk--and they walked a LOT--for a couple of months. And they were running 30 minutes for 10k. Interestingly, one of the first things Olympic champion, Naoko Takahashi, would do when she starts out her marathon training cycle, is to go for a long hike up and down the foothills of Boulder. Yes, WALKING! Eriko Asai, a sub 2:30 marathon runner in the 80s, would go for an extreme of LSD up to 4, 5, 6 hours at 12-minute pace. I posted a training pattern of Okutani, a 2:08 marathon runner from Japan who would be representing Japan at Osaka (I think he finished 6th or 7th at Helsinki as well???). He would spend about 3 months doing almost nothing but 8-minute pace running (of course, he would do up to 60km a day, 1200km a month); then a month of speed training. He found his winning combination; he said by doing this cycle, he set his PR in 10000 (28 something) in 2003. So it took him 4 months for him to get it down from 8-minute pace down to sub-5 pace!
If you want to buy into those rubbish about low mileage, fast pace training; and if you want to spread that all over the internet; go ahead and do it. But it's not going to help too many people too much. That's not going to help the sport very much either.
