Yes.
Do it!
Im going to try as well; I just turned 52. Buddy of mine clocked a 4:48 and his is a big guy that is 53.
Weight is going to play in...try to keep your weight as low as you can; and being older means more recovery, and less volume if you want to hit the marks and stay injury free (or so I have found). My 'favorite' ramp up is 12 x 400 on 65 or better (at least try to shoot for that) with a 200 or so rest...it sucks; but it is a great telltale.

Stephen J

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I've run 4:54 and doing 2x2 mile at 5:20 pace sounds like a workout I might not have been able to complete. For reference my open 5k was around 17:45-18:00 at the time I did a handful of 4:55-5:00 miles in T&F.

Are you going to train specifically for this?

I’m the opposite of you, I’m a diesel. At that time I could run 5:20 all day but the equivalent 400s or 800s would wreck me.

E

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Ouch, that sounds hard. I really don't have the speed.

E

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At some point I will have to, but I have an IM this fall.

There was a time that I felt like I could be in year round 5min mile shape with my tri training but not anymore.

E

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“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Who is your buddy? That is rarefied air at age 53. Would put him top two or three nationally 50-55 age group (for people who run track).

I was a miler in my college days during track season. I don't remember doing large volumes of weekly mileage (40-65mpw), but we did do a lot of fast track work in spikes (200m to 800m repeats), and hill repeat after hill repeat. Once you get towards the pointy end of the stick, I believe the mile is all about top end and muscular endurance. 400m to 1200m hill repeats were a great way to get whipped into good mile shape. Once you're in shape, pacing becomes key. I couldn't crack 4:10 until I stopped going out so fast and learned to pace the first 800m.

My guess is no, you won't be able to do it because the mile was not your specialty when you were young. Malcom Gladwell ran 5:17 at the age of 57 in a celebrity match last year:

Oh snap, that’s like the Oprah of marathon times.

Will have to bear Gladwell.

E

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Yes, know plenty of 50 year olds who have gotten there & even gone quite a bit faster.

FWIW Gladwell was 57 as it says in the video & hadn't been doing a lot of training for that particular run. He also ran fast in his college days so I would actually say that result should be seen as encouraging. His talent hasn't gone away. Someone who is willing to train & just turned 50 has a good shot.

Thanks!

E

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“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

For me at 53 i am not sure i could get the speed back to do it. My endurance is good but speed seems to be departing as i get older.
Works out to 3:08 per km i think. How do i get all these pacers that Gladwell had?
I will be impressed if you can do it. MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!!

I agree - the guys who are running sub 5:00 at 50plus are almost all old track guys who were running sub 4:15 in their heyday. There are outliers for sure, but to PR in the mile at 50 under 5:00 is very unlikely.

A 5:00 min mile at 50 is age graded to about a 4:22. If you didn't have the capability to run a 4:22 at your best, then it would be very tough to get there now in my opinion.

Similar background here, so I'm delighted to confirm this is entirely correct.

Specificity is key, so be prepared-both emotionally and physically-to spend some time on the track running repeats.

I'm the same vintage and think this is an audacious but achievable mark-good luck!

The real trick is avoiding injury with this type of training. Short, fast intervals are no one's friend after 50.

I hope there's a typo in here somewhere, because that workout as written is insane. For context, I'm currently running 15:50ish for the 5k (and think I could do a 4:38ish mile right now), and there's no way I could do that. 200 jog? Nope. 200 walk? Probably not. 2min standing rest? Maybe. A 400 rep in 65 is probably pushing 800m pace for most people near to a 5 flat mile, and 3 or 4 reps at that pace with 3 or 4 minute rest is brutal.

Now, if you're talking 75 as target pace with 200m walk or between 60 and 90 seconds standing rest, that's more realistic for a 5:00 miler. I'd still bet that most people without a lot of recent time spent at high speed would still struggle with 12 reps and are better off nailing the pace and only doing 8 to 10.

Using the WMA age-grading calculator a 5:00 mile for a 50 year old scores an age-performance % of 84.83 while a 10:40 2-mile scores an age-performance % of 84.78. Since you did 2 x 2 miles at that pace recently (I assume) I think you should be able to run a 5:00 mile in September.

This is a very very tough workout for a five minute miler. and it is something only a very few could do in their 50s. However, it sounds like Stephenj runs in fast company (his buddy is a 4:48 guy at 53), so he may be at the pointy end!

Not sure wether you Can pull it off or not, But if you could run like at 10k (you said all day) at 5:20, you could could easily do a 5min mile. Or should be able to. Just do some more High intensity workouts. I would go 400s, I’d do 1k intervals, just to get used to the higher HR, since it feels like you’re going to die, doing a 1mile effort

This is also entirely correct. It's hard enough when you are a young person, but at this age it's much harder to bounce back from these sessions.

Youth is wasted on all the wrong people!

Stephenj's buddy is indeed very impressive, with a time that's the age-graded equivalent of a 4:06 mile. I hope to be that good at the same age! I still maintain that the workout as originally described is not doable by a 5min miler. To me, the classic 400 repeats with roughly equivalent time rest is a mile pace workout (see Jack Daniels rep/R pace), and I'd expect most people doing that workout to do between 8 and 12 reps. The high end of that is already a "very very tough" day. For the 5min miler, that's 74-75 seconds on a 400m track. Running 65 second 400m reps (4:21-4:22 pace for the full mile) is nuts. By comparison, 15 year old me could do 8 or 10 reps in 74 when I ran a 4:55 1600m, 18 year old me was probably in the range of 68ish for 10 or 12 for a 4:36 mile, and the me of today (30 years old) is again at that 10 to 12 rep count at 69-70. This only gets worse for older athletes, who tend to lose a higher percentage of their speed sooner.
In short, if you show me someone who can complete 12 x 400m in 65 with 200m jog, I would bet good money they currently run a sub 4:30 mile, and more likely closer to 4:20. My prediction for a 5min miler who tries that workout to actually split something like 65, 70, 75, 80+, give up/puke.

I agree. You have the fitness already.

vdot of 60 for the 2 mile of 10:40

and the equivalent mile time is 4:58


Time to train for sharpening. Oh, and that last 1/4 is really, really painful.
Be ready.

*(I trained for a year to do my fastest mile back when I was 47, but I am not a runner- doing lots of 400's and 800's will help get you ready for it, though)

good luck!!

I used to do that exact workout, we would do them in sets of 4. Something like 60 seconds between intervals and 2-3 minutes between sets. It was brutal, and someone shooting for a sub-5:00 doesn't need to do 12. 4-6 intervals is fine at 72-75 seconds each. The hardest workout I remember doing was 4x800 in 2:00. The rest was like 5-6 minutes and we'd jog a bit. Then again, we had three guys running 4:04 to 4:07. You really need to be careful doing speedwork like that. You'll hurt in places you haven't hurt before, including every fiber of fascia in your feet if you wear spikes or flats. 2-3 mile slow warmup and plenty of dynamic stretching before doing stuff like that!