Training Plan Help

[adcobe]

so this training plan will not be for me but my DH. He will have to do a physical test to try to get on a fire depart as part of the hiring process. We are not quite sure when they test will be but I am betting on about 4 weeks from now, maybe even sooner. He will have to run 1.5 miles under I believe 12 minutes. Advice from some of his firefighter buddies suggest to run it in 10:30 at the longest. So he can run this distance easily. Speed wise he can for sure make it under the 12 minute mark but will need to focus on speed work to make that faster time. Can run about 2 miles nonstop. Has run 5 Ks with me needing some walking breaks. He is the kind of guy though, that when this is for a career he will push himself so hard to finish it he may even puke at the end.

So now that you have his back story I would like some help maybe putting a small training plan together for him. I figured he could start slow with some faster half miles, and then focus on speed work maybe like 5 x 400s? But not really sure how to lay this out for him. I really dont want him to get hurt obviously but I want him to be able to succeed.

Any help you have to give is much appreciated!

edited to fix spelling mistakes

[ebeth]

I don't think 4 weeks of speed work on this base is going to make much of a difference. I think he should just try running more frequently and for longer periods of time. Maybe 1x per week he can really push the pace for 10 min of his run.

[adcobe]

So maybe increase his mileage and the speed will come? This makes perfect sense since that is what happens when you train for longer races and then go to run shorter ones. I never thought of it that way because I have never had to train for just a mile.

[ebeth]

sort of. right now the base he has won't support a quality track workout. so getting in more mileage will probably give him more bang for his buck.

back in the day 'the mile' was my race. we were on the track 2x/week, usually 400s @ goal mile pace and we'd do like 8-10 of them after a mile warm up and straights and curves.

[gt7301b]

I agree he needs more miles.

[adcobe]

So if he were to say during the week run two miles and on the weekends run up to four miles that would work? Or even more mileage? Would you have him run "race pace" on every run?