Mile repeats with 30 seconds rest

Sorry for the few days delay in responding. Life got in the way.

A few basic principles to keep in mind:

The goal of true speed development is just that -- to improve your top end sprint speed. This is more relevant to your success as a mid-distance or distance runner than you might think. But that's an entirely separate discussion.

As such, it's important to do this work when you're very well warmed up, but still fresh, meaning at the beginning of a run/workout. Doing it after a distance run is not the best. However a few strides at 3k to mile pace after a distance run can obviously be helpful for form and turnover.

So a true speed development session at a beginning level might look something like this:

Thorough warmup -- dynamic stretching warmup, easy running, drills, a few short strides.

4 x 90m -- 30m at mile pace, 30m at 800 pace, 30m at mile pace (full recovery after each -- 3 to 4 minutes passive rest)

Short cool down jog

This could then be followed by a normal distance run -- not your long run, but whatever distance you would normally run on a mid-week distance day.

The idea here is to get you started, without shocking your body, since you haven't been doing this before. The progression, as you get used to doing this kind of work, would be to gradually increase the speed of the 30m segments. You could go from the above to:

800m pace, 400m pace, 800m pace

Then to:

400m pace, 200m pace, 400m pace

And finally to:

400m pace building to 200m pace, 100m pace (just below a full out sprint), 400m pace

As you progress to these faster speeds, it's important to increase the time of the full recoveries. You may feel like you're ready to go again before you actually are. This is a bit of a new concept for distance runners who haven't done this before.

This work is also more stressful to your systems than you might think. Keep the pace of the distance run afterwards pretty easy. Don't do this session more than once every ten days or so.

On a completely different note, regarding your original post, as others have said, you ran your mile repeats too fast, especially with such a short rest time between. Don't do that again. You'll gain more fitness improvement by backing off some.

Good principle to remember -- Underdone is way better than overdone.

Best of luck!

Get out of your mom's basement, incel.

friztek wrote:

snowdays wrote:

sub 16:40, and probably faster

OP probably did run this workout too hard, yes, but I would LOVE to know which 17:00 guys are pulling off this workout on just 30 seconds rest.

Well first of all I’m a girl. Second, as someone else said the point of this workout was to get a lil more tempo work in as I did a 4 mile tempo around 5:38 avg and it was hard! To get 5 miles in at the same pace was a solid improvement and the wind factor was big as the 4 mile tempo day there was 0 wind. My PBs from last year are 17:02 5k and 9:56 3k. This year my goal is sub 16:20 by may/June

Awesome Girl! Although you did say it was HARD which I take to mean harder than tempo/threshold pace...which by almost any academic definition would mean you were running long intervals (faster than tempo) with too little rest. You had a tempo set up, with interval (95% HRM) pace. Kind of not a thing. But...it was a fitness test if nothing else! Probably sub 17.

friztek wrote:

citius5000 wrote:

I would say sub 17 for sure. Hard to go much faster than tempo pace with 30sec rest in my opinion.

My coach said the goal was to increase volume. I had did a 4 mile tempo around the same average a few weeks back so the 30 sec breaks were to be able to get an extra mile at tempo effort without making it a race effort but like I said only difference was the strong winds and I still stubbornly wanted to run the same

Paces as my 4 mile tempo with no wind. As some said due to the conditions I may have ran too fast. I wasn’t overly exerting myself but It was hard. I do not think we will do this type of workout again from what he told me

So, we all keep saying "tempo" which it certainly looks like. But your first sentence sounds like Intervals, hard intervals! Just sayin. Sounds like soon you will be doing the same workout comfortably hard-which will be actual tempo. Its all good, as long as you dont over do a workout that you labeled as HARD.

A few years ago I ran a workout like that but averaged 5:40s with 1 minute rest. Granted it felt "comfortably hard" for me. Shortly after I ran a solo 5k road race in 16:20. It's hard to say with you since it felt so hard.