A couple of times I’ve thought about trying to get my best 1 mile below 5 minutes but never dedicated time to it, I’ve always moved on to doing some other training.

The other evening I gave it a go to see what I’m currently capable of. My best is currently 5:27.8 and this test came in at 5:28.8.

Encouraged by this I think I’m going to give this a go over the coming months and see if I can get it under 5 minutes or if not how close I can get.

Update 1st June 2020 #

My initial thought is No, I can’t run a sub 5 minute mile. But then it’s sort of early days in this.

I’ve done a couple of 1 mile efforts that have stayed around the 5:30 mark and then another session of 400m sprints.

I’ll keep going but it would be at least encouraging to get a new PR time on 1 mile.

Update 14th June 2020 #

After a week where I did a long ride and a half marathon training run I tried a mile today and it was the slowest I’ve done so far. A good 6 or 7 seconds slower than what I’ve been doing lately. This has been the problem before, I think I’ll try the fast mile and then do other training and never keep at it.

On the plus side I do feel like I’ve got a 5k PR in me at the moment, maybe that will be this week.

I was very wrong. My 5k was nearly a minute slower than usual. The first mile was ok, second mile terrible and 3rd mile picked up a bit.

Update 26th June 2020 #

I thought I had a PR today. Turned out to be 1.5 seconds off but felt good and if it weren’t for the slight incline at the end I think I would have had it. But sub 5 still feels like a big ask. All good fun trying though.

Update 4th August 2020 #

One of the good, or bad depending on how you look at it, things of tracking this is I can see just how often I attempt a hard mile or put some effort into improving my pace. It’s been a while. I tried a hard mile but as soon as I set off I knew the legs weren’t quite there today but still did a decent enough effort.

I am starting to think I should have called this post Can I Beat My Mile PR.