Tips for mile race tomorrow?

Question

Tomorrow, the top 5 kids in the school will be running against eachother. The current leader, my best friend, with a time of 6:25, is 3 seconds faster than me, but the third-best person in the school is only 3 seconds behind ME.

I'm also running the mile, the 200, and doing the standing long jump for a track meet around 5:30 on the same day (the mile run for school is in the morning.).

Does anyone have any tips, especially for the mile run? i.e. how to run each lap, etc.? This is going to be a new experience because most of the time, the other kids are slow. "Staying with the pack" is not an option. I've never given much thought to running AGAINST others before, as opposed to just trying to beat a time.

Thank you! Tips about the 200, standing long jump, or how to prepare for my first meet are welcome also!

P.S. My mile time is 6:28-I'm a 13-year-old girl. The school record is 6:23. Also, I got 6:39 the first time I ran the mile, but the coach let me retake it, running harder

Answer 1

Since you're so new to racing, my main advice would be not to stress too much about strategy, and just don't overdo it on the first lap.

Strategy-wise, two options are:

1. Try to run each lap at about the same pace. So, if you want to run a 6:20, that's 1:35 or 95 seconds per lap. A balanced pace will usually lead to a better overall time.

2. Forget about the time and just try to win. Run most of the race slightly behind your best friend and try to out-sprint her at the end.  Obviously, this works best if you have a better finishing kick than your friend. In general, it seems harder to run in the lead than to follow close behind someone, so you'd be making her work harder.

Anyway, have fun. You'll probably be racing the mile a ton of times in the years to come and will have numerous opportunities to compete and improve

Answer 2

If you want to run a 6:00 mile, you need to average 90-second laps. The closer you stick to 90-second laps, the easier it will be to run a 360-second mile.

You say the pack is slow? How slow are they on the first lap? Chances are many of them will run the first lap significantly faster than 90 seconds. Then they'll just die out and barely finish the course. You don't want to fall into that mistake. It is a lot easier to make up for a first lap that is too slow than one that is too fast. Too fast puts you in oxygen debt and you don't realize how much you really slow down from the first lap to the second (you actually may feel like you're going just as fast because of the oxygen debt pain you have put yourself into).

So, you should be at 90 seconds completing the first lap and at 3 minutes completing the second lap. Ideally, you would be at 4:30 after lap three, but if you are feeling pretty strong at the halfway mark, you might want to put in a hard third lap. The fourth lap is pretty irrelevant because when you are running for time, the race is long over before you get to that point. There are only so many seconds you can make up on the last lap — and those are not too many.

When I ran my best mile, my quarter-mile splits were 65-66-63-67. Note that my third lap was fastest.

Also, just to note, that if you are a 13-year-old girl running a 6:23 mile, why are you wasting your time in the 200. Your talent is clearly in the distances — may you enjoy a great career and a long-standing school record. If it doesn't work out for you this time, just keep trying. The advice I'm giving you is the real deal, kiddo. There are not too many ways to run an efficient, fast mile.

Just run the 200 for fun. Go out fast, power the curve and give it all you've got to the wire. How fast you can turn the 200 will give your coach some indication of whether you should be in the 800, 1600 or 3200. Leg speed matters.

Print this and show it to your coach.