do you have any hints on how to improve your 1.5 mile time?? Rite now mine is around 10 to 10 and a half min. and i want to bring it down to atleast a 9 by summer.
my opinion is that improving your 5k time is much more important in preparing for vmi than ur 1.5mi time. its because vmi just requires so much endurance and stamina from a rat. if ur 5k time sucks, i'll be honest, youre going to have a tougher time. a side benefit is that improving your 5k time will also improve your 1.5mi time.
the key to improving any long distance running time is putting in the miles. build up slowly to being able to run every day or almost every day consistently. try to run 10mi at a time on sundays. any cross country program you find on the internet should be fine. when you get yourself to the point when you can't run any faster and your legs feel like lead, you have to go for some interval training or somethign like that to teach ur muscles to go faster.
before doing a lot of running though, make sure your shoes exactly fit right for you and find out if you pronate.
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-240-319-327-7727-0,00.html
a good running shoe is critical to not getting injured. so many rats get stress fractures during the ratline, probably from poorly fit shoes or from not ramping ur training up slowly enough. be sure to build up real slowly from whatever level you are running at now to a good cross country training program of running (if you decide to do that).
a good way to build up your base in running slowly might be to do the first 17 weeks of something like this
http://www.navy-prt.com/trainingrun.html
which gently gets you from 8mi/wk to 25mi/wk.
then to run 27mi/wk in wks 18&19, 29mi/wk in 20/21, 31 in 22/23, 33 in 24/25 and then to start this program in wk 26
http://www.halhigdon.com/crosscountry/cross.htm
then by the time hellweek 2009 comes, youll be in awesome running condition, and im sure your 1.5mi time will be down at least a full min. btw, if you are running more than 8mi/wk now, then u should just start further into the progam. u should be honest with yourself though. just because u know you can run 20mi in a week without a prob doesn't mean u should start there. if you did, youd just endup injuring yourself and screwing up your progress.
if this is your senior yr, you might also consider trying out for ur highschool's outdoor track team in the spring. u know u wont be studying much in the spring anyways (haha) so outdoor trakc might be just the sort of thing to help get you into shape and push u do do some regular running everyday.
running is such a difficult thing to get right and really push ur limits on because of the possibility of serious injuries. i know. i captained my highschool xc team and lettered in xc. spangler, the xc coach at vmi kept trying to get me to join the vmi xc team (i'd wanted to during the summer) but i decided the ratline was just too hard and i was going to just melt down, so i didn't join. but i still know a few things about runnig.