It wasn’t until I started to take in some context around the race that the magnitude of the result started to sink in. I’m eighth-fastest in world history!? [Editor’s note: now ninth after Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s world record run in Lievin… sorry, Gary!] And just two seconds off of the new world record?! Although I had thought a lot about running that fast and knew I could do it, I never considered the company that it would place me in. For the first time in my career, I found myself delivering a result that was knocking on the door of the best guys in the world.

Although it was a huge milestone in my career, I still walked away from the race feeling hungry and like I had more to prove. After all, I’m only ranked second in the NCAA, and there’s a slew of guys right behind me who are ready to topple the 3:50 barrier, too.

I don’t just want to run fast, I want to win an NCAA title and fight for a spot on a World team come outdoors. But with that said, I’m still taking the Millrose Games as a sign of the huge amount of progress I’ve made towards accomplishing those goals.

Here’s a peek into a week of my training that helped me build confidence and led to my 3:48 mile at the Millrose Games.

Tuesday, January 28th:

AM- 3 x mile at threshold, at 85% body weight on the Lightspeed Lift treadmill

PM- 10 x 1000m at threshold

In the morning, I did some miles on the Lightspeed to get some extra threshold in while taking a little bit of the strain off my legs. This helps to keep me fresh for the main workout in the afternoon, and healthy throughout the season. In the afternoon workout, I felt super strong, which was a good indicator of my aerobic fitness. I haven’t always felt like threshold work was a strength of mine, but coming off of a great cross country season and fast 3000m in December, the longer workouts have felt very under control. Getting ~15k of threshold work in a day really shows me I’m building strength to carry me far into the season.

Thursday, January 30th:

20 x 200m at mile pace, 10 minutes rest, 800 at mile pace

Honestly, this wasn’t the best I’ve felt in a workout. My legs felt a little flat going into it but I was able to settle into mile pace on tired legs, which gave me good confidence that I’d be able to run that pace a week later when I felt fresher. The 800 at the end of the workout turned out to be a pretty spot-on end-of-race simulation. I split 1:53.1 during the workout and 1:53.18 for the last 800 in the Wanamaker Mile! Coming in, I thought I was in shape for big PR, but I felt like this workout helped confirm it.

Saturday, February 1st:

13-mile long run at 6:29/mi

This is a typical long run for me but I kept the pace under control because it was during a big week of training. Since it’s early in the season, I’m still trying to get quality long runs in and make sure to keep the volume up. I kept the heart rate down and still got the right amount of time on my feet.

Total Volume for the week: 78 miles

I’m now at a point in my season where I’m trying to keep the volume and strength work up while starting to introduce more race-pace work so this week was a reflection of that. I was really happy with how this week went because I was able to get high volume in and get a feel for mile pace on tired legs. Thursday’s workout especially built my confidence that I could run at the pace I needed to run at Millrose and was one of the key workouts in my build towards the race.

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