The 24-year-old British distance outlines his workouts and progress under coach Mark Vile.
As British indoor 3000m champion Tom Keen looks ahead to a summer of possibilities, he reflects with good humour on a 2022 training camp in Colorado that led inexplicably to one world title (for Jake Wightman) and a 3:40 1500m in Luxembourg (for him).
Wightman and Keen have trained together on many occasions, most recently in Flagstaff, Arizona at the end of last year. There’s mutual benefit, of course, but as Keen points out: “If I knew he was in a good place, I knew I’d be in a good place, and that gave me confidence going into races.” Except it didn’t always work out: “It was weird,” he says, “because I did every session [with Jake] in Colorado, then I came second in a B race in Luxembourg and he won Worlds in 3:29. I was just like: ‘What’s happened there?’.”
Keen laughs, but he acknowledges that perhaps there was a lesson in there, too.
Last year is a perfect example. In 2025, he ran a personal best over 3000m in Glasgow in January (7:45.87) and a 1500m best of 3:35.12 in Boston in February. He then made his senior track debut for Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn. It was a successful indoor season that had the potential to set him up for a fantastic summer, but the results didn’t quite match up to his expectations.
“Nothing really went wrong,” he says. “I raced loads and loads and just ran 3:35 over and over again in as many different ways as you could think possible. I guess it’s something – at least it was consistent – but it was just frustrating not to have that one breakthrough run where everything clicks and you knock a second-and-a-half, two seconds off your PB.”
‘Plateau’ over ‘progress’ perhaps, but a very solid benchmark from which to build.
Keen’s January 2026 camp to Potchefstroom in South Africa, which coincided with a move to adidas – an exciting opportunity that he hopes will enable him to be “a little bit more professional” with his set-up and focus entirely on his own needs – marked the start of a new era.
He returned to the UK to win his first British title in a thrilling 3000m, his 7:51.68 edging out second-placed Henry McLuckie (7:51.70). Notably, he did so while keeping his mileage high and without too many “super-fast sessions”. In fact, there wasn’t too much focus on the indoor season at all.
“I’m feeling strong and I’m more confident than I have been [in the past] going into the main outdoor season,” he says, acknowledging the benefits of a slightly different approach to training this year.
“I had a sort of small breakthrough indoors last year, but when I ran that fairly respectable 1500m [of 3:35.12 in Boston] it ended up being my season’s best, so I think we just focused too much on doing the really quick stuff. Looking back at the mileage, I’d actually dropped down to like 30, 40 miles a week, whereas this year we’ve kept it up at about 80 all the way through the camp. Obviously [pre-UK Indoor Championships] was a little bit down, but we’ll get straight back on it again and hopefully just stay more consistent instead of having the peaks and troughs throughout the winter.”
The 24-year-old University of Birmingham graduate has a lot to look forward to as he targets selection for this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham. “I’ve still got a fairly strong connection with Birmingham, so to be up there and to compete in front of a home crowd would be pretty special,” he says. The European team in particular will be tough – 1500m running in Great Britain continues to represent the global standard – but that in itself is a positive.
“I think a really successful summer is making both of those teams,” he says. “If I can run the qualifying time for the Europeans (3:33.50) then that would be a good PB and I’d be pretty happy, so that’s definitely the goal going into the season. To be honest, I feel like it was there last year, it just never clicked, so I feel confident in going for it.
“I actually think that because so many top 1500m runners are from the UK it almost seems more achievable [to succeed]. I prefer it this way. It makes your life pretty difficult making a team but, if you can make the British team, then you know you’re a serious contender for going deep into a champs which is quite exciting.”
A typical training week (Potchefstroom, South Africa, January 2026)
Keen, who is based just outside of Cambridge, trains primarily alone but links up with his club (Cambridge & Coleridge) on a Tuesday evening.
Alongside coach Mark Vile and athletes including Callum Dodds and Tom Bridger, he spent January 2026 in Potchefstroom where he averaged around 80 miles per week.
- Monday: (am) 8-9 miles at steady pace (sub-6min miles); (pm) 5 miles easy (on grass) and 30min cross trainer
- Tuesday: (am) hills or longer track session such as 10 x 600m at 3km pace off 90 seconds; (pm) easy run and gym
- Wednesday: (am) 6 miles followed by prehab session; (pm) 6 miles
- Thursday: (am) tempo session – for example 6 x 1M off 75sec (road) – controlled efforts at 5min/mile pace; (pm) 5 miles easy plus speed drills and sprints
- Friday: 45min cross trainer or complete rest (alternate each week)
- Saturday: (am) split 800m reps at 3km pace or quicker, such as 2 x (600m-200m/500m-300m/400m-400m) with 60sec between efforts, 3 minutes between sets; (pm) 30min easy run, 30min cross train, plus gym
- Sunday: 14-15 miles
Favourite session: “My favourite session is five sets of 300m (1500m pace) then 200m (flat out) with five minutes between sets.”
Least favourite session: “Probably 500s or 600s on the track; I just think that if you’re doing 500m or 600m on the track you’re basically just running the same pace as you do for a 400m effort – but for longer!”
