As an ex-military man I really used to look forward to the traditional 1.5 mile army running test, because for me it was a great test of running speed as well as a way to assess and increase my anaerobic threshold, due to the all out nature of the test.

The test is one of the tests the Army uses to assess the fitness levels of potential recruits as well as maintaining fitness levels of serving soldiers. It gives a good indication of cardiovascular fitness and is an excellent way of monitoring progress, as your speed should improve as you get fitter over time.

The whole troop would perform a 1.5 mile warm up in exactly 14 minutes, immediately followed by the individually timed 1.5 mile ‘best effort’.

The Army expect that men and women need to achieve a time under 14 minutes. You may think 14 minutes is a long time to run 1.5 miles and you’d be right in thinking that, however take a look at the table below as gender and age come into it and as you’ll see, a person under 30 who completes the 1.5 mile test in 11:16 or under, is classed as a poor effort.

Use this table to see how you compare to other members in your club, or to set a target for yourself to monitor progress. Make sure you pick a nice flat course, or even better, hit the running track. Most of my tests were either on airfields or around the garrison roads (which were very flat).

Are you in the elite?
Approximately 1% of the military attains the ‘excellent’ standard as shown in the table above. Those that do, become members of the revered ‘300 club’.

Where do you score I hear you ask. Well, it’s been that long since I’ve completed one of these tests that I couldn’t give an accurate time. Saying that, whenever I did complete the test I always scored in the excellent category for the under 30’s, which is sub 8:15.

Based on my 5K running form during the height of my season I would like to think I’d still be very close to the 8:15 mark, or even under it. To achieve the magic sub 8:15 mark you need to be running an average pace of 5:30/mile or under. Once I’ve got my base training out of the way I’ll give it a bash and monitor progress.

I’d be interested to find out how you guys get on with this too and to give you some incentive I propose we have a bit of a competition to find the fastest 1.5 mile ‘Trispace Army Miler’ during 2009, with prizes at the end of the year for the fastest male and female in each age category.

Drop me a note to miler@trispace.co.uk with your 1.5 mile test time as well as your age and a recent timed 5k, 10k or triathlon result and we’ll keep track of things on the sidebar of this site. Be sure to complete the required 1.5 mile warm up in 14 mins before the test. Each time you beat your best effort let me know. Honest results please, as I have means of checking any previous race results!!

Good luck!

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Tags: 'Trispace Army Miler'

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under 'Trispace Army Miler'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.