Josh Kerr Just Broke a 27-Year-Old World Record. Here’s What His Training Can Teach You

Josh Kerr ran 3:42.66 for the mile in London, breaking a world record that had stood since 1999. The time’s ridiculous on its own, but the more interesting part is how specific the preparation became once Kerr and his team decided they were actually going after the record.

They called the plan Project 222, a reference to the 222 seconds needed to run 3:42. The goal wasn’t just to get Kerr into great shape and see what happened. They built the season around creating the exact fitness, speed and race conditions needed to run that time.

There’s a lot in Kerr’s training that applies outside of running, especially when you look at how the different pieces fit together.

1. The Long Run Still Matters

Kerr races an event that lasts less than four minutes, but his training still includes a significant amount of aerobic volume. He was running around 70 miles per week during the build toward the record, which is a good reminder that short events can still depend heavily on a strong aerobic system.

That matters for CrossFit athletes too. Just because your competition workouts might last 8, 12 or 20 minutes doesn’t mean every conditioning session should live in that same range. Longer aerobic work improves your ability to recover, handle more training and maintain output when fatigue starts to build.

The long work isn’t always the most exciting part of the week, but it gives the harder work somewhere to sit.

2. He Still Lifts

Kerr still strength trains even though his sport’s almost entirely running. That matters because running fast isn’t just about cardiovascular fitness. You need to repeatedly produce force into the ground while maintaining good mechanics, and strength helps support that.

For endurance athletes, strength training shouldn’t be viewed as something separate from performance. The right strength work can improve durability, help athletes tolerate more running and give them more force to work with when speed becomes the priority.

The goal isn’t to turn a miler into a powerlifter. It’s to build enough strength to support what the athlete’s actually trying to do.

3. Specificity Gets Very Specific

Kerr and his team didn’t just say they wanted to run fast 400s. They knew the record required roughly 55-second laps, so a huge part of the preparation became getting comfortable running at that exact speed.

One key session was 4 x 800 meters, with the third and fourth reps run in 1:50. He also completed a workout totaling 4,000 meters at world-record pace using four sets of 200m, 600m, 200m.

That’s what specificity really looks like. General fitness gets you into a position where you can do the work, but at some point you have to train the actual demands of what you’re preparing for.

If you’re preparing for repeated four-minute efforts, you need repeated four-minute efforts. If your competition demands heavy lifting under fatigue, you eventually need to practice heavy lifting under fatigue. The closer you get to the goal, the more your training should start looking like the goal.

4. They Trained the Environment Too

Kerr spent the final five weeks before the race training at altitude in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at around 5,335 feet. His parents even stayed with him during the block, with his mother helping provide physiotherapy.

That part’s easy to overlook because we tend to think about training only in terms of workouts, sets and reps. But recovery, environment, sleep, treatment and stress all influence how much quality work an athlete can actually absorb.

You don’t need to move to altitude to apply that lesson. Sometimes improving training means improving what happens between sessions just as much as improving the sessions themselves.

5. They Rehearsed the Race

One of the coolest details from the build was how much they practiced the actual race experience.

At altitude, Kerr ran a 1,200-meter time trial in 2:42.45. His team also simulated the shakeout run and physio treatment they planned to use in London so race day would feel as familiar as possible. The day before the race, one of his pacemakers worked with him through 300m, 200m and 100m at target pace. That goes beyond building fitness. They were removing uncertainty.

Before a competition, you should know your warm-up, pacing, transitions, fueling and how you want the first few minutes to feel. You don’t want competition day to be the first time you test any of it.

6. Once Fitness Is High Enough, Small Gains Matter

Brooks built Kerr custom spikes designed around his mechanics and his need to repeatedly run 55-second laps. They also developed an aerodynamically tested racing suit and used testing around oxygen use, perception and footwear performance.

For most athletes, shoes and equipment aren’t what’s holding them back. Training, recovery and consistency will always matter more. But once you get to the level Kerr’s at, the margins get smaller and smaller, so details that barely matter to the average athlete can become meaningful.

The important part is getting the order right. Kerr didn’t start with better spikes and hope they made him world-record fit. He built the fitness first, then his team looked for every small advantage they could find around it.

What I’d Take From This for Your Own Training

There are a few pieces from Kerr’s preparation that we use a lot in our own training. We usually keep a longer 20–30 minute lighter-weight AMRAP during the week and a long run on the weekend because that aerobic work supports everything else.

We also use different types of interval work for different reasons. PPM progresses the effort across sets – 70%, 75%, 80% and up – so you train different zones and learn what those efforts actually feel like. Then we’ll also use shorter, harder intervals, like 6 sets of 8 calorie Ski, 8 dual dumbbell shoulder-to-overhead, 6 dual dumbbell squat cleans and 4 dual dumbbell thrusters, where we were finishing each set in about 60 seconds and resting 2:00.

Those two workouts aren’t trying to do the same thing. PPM teaches pacing, control and awareness of your own body, while the shorter intervals teach you how to push hard and still come back ready to do it again, much like Kerr’s 4 x 800m. I’m going to break that second workout down more in another email later this week.

That’s the main lesson for me: different types of training should have different jobs, but they should all be moving you toward the same goal.

Photo: Andrew Ward / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.

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