At most track meets, everyone focuses on the starting line when the milers are called to race. Athletes stop warming up, spectators rush back from the concession stand, and the announcer gets ready to recite the competitors' credentials.

There's a hush. The most exciting event in track, the one event everybody knows about including your friends who don't have a clue about running, is about to begin. Every February at the Millrose Games indoor meet in New York's Madison Square Garden, the announcer cries, "Ladies and gentleman, the Wanamaker Mile." First you hear a big roar. Then, when the starter's pistol is raised, you can hear a pin drop.

This same respect is given to the best high school milers. Remember when Alan Webb ran 3:53.43 in June, 2001, to break Jim Ryun's 36-year-old high school mile record? Webb's achievement made headlines around the world, and he even got to appear on "Letterman."

Which means, sooner or later, you'll be tempted to run the mile yourself. If you're already running the mile (or slightly shorter 1600, used in most high schools) you know that it requires an equal combination of speed and strength. If you're in great shape but lack speed, you won't be a very good miler; likewise, if you've got blazing speed but lack stamina, you also won't make it as a miler.

How to Run More Consistently

"The mile or 1600 requires an approximately equal amount of endurance and speed," says 3-time Olympian Steve Scott, whose 3:47.69 in 1982 is still the American record in the mile. "If you're really weak in one of those two areas, you need to work on that weakness. Otherwise, the biggest focus of your training should be on what I call 'endurance strength'-training at your anaerobic threshold."

The anaerobic threshold is the point above 90 percent of maximum effort when you tire severely and your legs get heavy. Train just below that point, Scott says. One such workout is a 20- to 45-minute run at a steady, moderately hard pace-too hard to easily carry on a conversation, but not so hard that you're out of breath. Says Scott: "You'll know you've run this workout too hard if you have to slow down toward the end." A slightly easier variation is to break the run into segments, but with minimal recovery
If your endurance base is solid, Olympic 1500-meter runner Carrie Tollefson believes the most important training is repeat 400s-the classic workout for developing speed and staying power in the mile. "Track interval training of any kind is important, whether it's repeat 200s or 1000s," she says, "but 400s are the best. I've been doing them since high school."

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When Tollefson competed in the Olympic 1500 meters ("metric mile") last summer in Athens, she felt it was like going back to high school. As a teenager in rural Minnesota, Tollefson won the state 1600 title four times, with a best of 4:53, before moving up to the 3000 meters and 5000 meters in college and earning five NCAA titles. In Athens, she was back to racing four laps (or slightly less) for the 1500. But this was different, and not just because she was competing against the best in the world. She had also learned the art of pacing.

"In high school, it seemed like I always went out hard and hung on for dear life," she recalled. "That's the way everyone raced. I would hit the 800 in almost my personal best, and then hoped no one would catch me while I slowed down. Now I know better, so I usually run the second half of races faster than the first half."
Running an even pace or "negative splits" (a faster second half) is also a strategy that worked well for Steve Scott, who ran a record 136 sub-4 miles. "A lot of high school miles start out faster than college miles," says Scott, who is now track and cross-country coach at California State University-San Marcos. "So many boys hit the first lap in around 62 seconds, which puts them on pace to run 4:08, but they usually end up running about 4:20 or slower. In most cases, the best strategy is to run the first three laps at the same pace, then a slightly faster last lap, where you kick it in."

That's easy to say, but harder to do. "You rarely see high-school runners do that," says Scott, "because they have to be extremely patient and confident to let the leaders go. But when they do, it starts paying off on the third lap, when they start catching people. The third lap is when you should assess how you feel and prepare to make your biggest move."

Health & Injuries

A bright new talent in the mile is high school junior Craig Miller of Manheim Township in Pennsylvania, who in 2003 set a national freshman record for the 1600 (4:14.26) and improved to a 4:06.76 mile last spring as a sophomore, 2nd all-time only to Alan Webb's time as a high school soph. As with Steve Scott, Miller's trademark is the negative-splits race. He won the Pennsylvania State Meet 1600 last spring by cruising the first half in 2:08 and blistering the second half in 2:01 for a 4:09.33. His workouts follow the same pattern.

"Negative-splits training works for any distance," says Manheim coach Terry Lee. "It lets your muscles and the rest of your body rev up gradually in the first half, and then challenges you in the second half, just like in a race-forcing you to run hardest when you're tired." Here's Lee's approach, used to toughen Miller and his teammates: Trail and road distance runs, designed to maintain the strength developed during cross-country season. Start slow and finish fast. Before track workouts, the warm-up is out-and-back on the streets: "out" in 18 minutes, "back" in 15 minutes.

During track workouts, the negative-splits approach is applied in one of two ways: each interval gets progressively faster, or you can run the second half of each interval faster than the first half.

With smarter training, you should improve on the record that counts the most-your personal record. Maybe that won't get you on "Letterman," but it will earn you the recognition of teammates and friends.