mile repeats - ideal rest between miles?

Seems like the BYU marathon alumni take about 4 minute rest between their hard track intervals. How that translates to the marathon, I have no idea.

I don't know about optimal but I am doing 5x1600 w/ 400 float recovery this weekend. 1600s at threshold and float at about 90% marathon pace. Incorporated into a medium long run (15-16 miles). Light to moderate workout overall.

Interesting. Earlier today I did a test version of this workout, 4x1 mile (5k pace) with 400m @ recovery pace (about 2-2.5 minutes) and I was pretty friggin gassed by the end of the workout. 4 minute standing rest would've made the mile repeats way easier.

Makes me think either 800m jog or 4 minutes standing rest is better. Or running the intervals a bit slower (like halfway between 5k/10k pace) but TBH I'm an "all in" kind of guy with interval work.

My go-to mile repeat workout is 3 x 1-mile at 5K pace with 5-minute jog recoveries. I've progressed this up to 5 x 1-mile, same pace and recovery. This is a classic "VO2max" workout.

But I've also done 3 x 1-mile at 1-hour race pace, 2-minute standing recoveries. This is when I'm first introducing threshold-pace workouts. This progresses to 3 x 1.5-mile, 2-min recoveries; then 3 x 2-mile, 2-min recoveries.

Once I tried 6 miles thusly: 1-mile at 10K pace, 1-mile at marathon pace, repeat twice, continuous run. Challenging, but not as hard as I expected.

Thanks - very helpful as always. Sounds like I need to lengthen my recoveries between miles. I'll try bumping it up to 800m next time around (which is about 4-4.5 minutes at recovery pace for me).

Interesting, I'm on the other side. I do 2:30 recovery and my goal effort is between 5k and 10k pace. I try to stress keeping workouts "controlled". I think your method would be easier and enable a faster pace, but no idea which is better.

I do know that this method has enabled me to race 5ks at paces faster than my mile intervals.

Really depends on what you’re aiming for. I like 2 lap slow jog after 8k-10k paced intervals but I’m a mid D guy.

5 minutes on/off for 40 minutes to an hour is a great aerobic stimulus too. Idk what kind of shape you’re in, but if you’re faster it’s pretty close to the same stimulus as mile repeats.

One of the workouts I'm doing this training cycle for Boston marathon is 6 x 1 mi at 10% faster than goal marathon pace, with 400 meter jogging rest. 2.5 mile warm up, 10 miles total. The longer or more restful your rest, the faster you'll be able to run the intervals, but the more you risk being unable to sustain your goal race pace, on race day. More rest feels good and is confidence building. But it's deceptive, because it's rest you're not going to get on race day.

Mile repeats at marathon pace would be 8xmile with 2 minutes rest. Better to do 4x 3k though.

8 X Mile with a 400 rest. No standing rest since there is no time out in the marathon. Best workout I have ever had in St Petersburg, Florida with a group lead by Peter Maher. We averaged 4:40 with Peter doing his last one under 4:20. Three weeks later I had a ten minute lead on Peter Maher at the 20 mile mark of the Manitoba marathon. Darn if he didn't catch me.

Always take ample rest between intervals. None of the short rest crap. If you want to get the effect of a steady out of breath feeling, you should just do a continuous tempo run. Point of repetition training is to hit your paces with good running economy.

I think there is something to be said for running fast on tired legs. That said I prefer slightly longer rests but run at a good clip (80-90% marathon pace). Taking 30s-60s standing rests is just annoying with all the stopping and starting.

Way too hard pace. For Marathon I would focus these mile repeats to increase the lactate threshold. You can do them at slightly below to slightly above 1h race pace, like HM to 10k pace. Depending on the pace, I would say from 60-90s rest is plenty.

Especially training for the marathon 3min active recovery aka jog a lap is the best option here. Make sure your running date pace and not goal pace. Goal pace would require more rest to do 5 of them. Doing 5xmile at 5k pace is hard for most.

I didn’t read much of anything you wrote. But I will add that if I were doing mile repeats and waited until my heart rate dropped to 119 between reps, the rest interval would probably be ~30 sec. Maybe. It would all depend on the type of workout.

No need for mile reps at 5k pace.

5x1 mile at 10k pace is a hard enough session. I like 2 min rest or a 400 jog in between.

Since you are training for a marathon, you could also things like 6-8x1 mile at threshold or 2 hour race pace, or somewhere in between. Rest should be 1 min or jog a 200 OR float a 400m, like HHW said.

If you want to do 5k pace do shorter reps 400-1k with pretty short rest. Easier to recover from.

The advisability of all of these sessions depend on your training history and mileage.

I agree with the other posters. 5x1 mile w/400 jog recovery is too hard, raises the risk of injury, and IMO doesn't give you maximal benefit for the marathon.

To answer your question, if you absolutely have to do mile repeats @ 5k pace then 4-5 minutes standing rest is what I'd suggest.

If you want to keep the 5k pace, then do 800m repeats @5k pace w/400m jog recovery. But I agree with the previous poster that 10k pace w/400m jog recovery is ultimately a better workout.

I concur with this. Running a few miles at 5k pace is not a great workout for marathon training. As OP mentioned, "being gassed" limits the volume you can do at this pace. For marathon training we want the capability to run at sub-max effort for a long time.

Daniels rule of thumb for ~5k pace is equal time recovery up to 8% of your weekly mileage. But he also suggests a max duration of 5 minutes per repeat.

Rule of thumb for mile repeats at 1-hour race pace is 60s recovery for each mile, and then around 10% of weekly mileage for volume. You can estimate this at 30-40s slower than 5k pace. If you want to do a little more that 10% at this pace, you'll probably be OK, especially if you break it up into sets with some longer recovery in between.

For every race, race pace matters. You also need to be getting some significant work at your marathon pace.

Clarification on this. Equal time recovery for each repeat, but usually easy jogging not standing. 8% of weekly mileage is for the total workout, not including the rest. So 50 miles per week would be a max of 4 miles at pace.