Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Mile Repeats

I don't know how long it's been since I did mile repeats. The last time I remember was back in April of 2010. It just seems like it's been forever! I had planned to do them all week last week, but it just never happened. I had a crazy busy week at work and actually took two days off from running. Oh the horror! The week before, I had an 80 mile week and felt pretty good. My legs were dead and just wouldn't turn over fast, but I felt great. I knew that jump was pretty quick, and it followed three consecutive 70 mile weeks, so I turned down both the intensity and the volume last week. I did about 50 miles and most of them were fairly easy except for a tempo/speed combo workout on Friday. As a result, I'm feeling great again this week.

Today called for 4 x 1 mile repeats at 5k pace. I dreaded it, but I'm so glad I did it! Matt joined me for the first couple of repeats.
  1. 5:49
  2. 5:43
  3. 5:44
  4. 5:43
Sub 18 sure feels like a possibility if I have a good day and the weather cooperates. It was a joy running in the rain this morning. 

4 comments:

April said...

I can not even fathom running that fast for 100 meters much less 4 miles!! Way to go!!!

rundanrun said...

Is there a recovery time between the mile repeats and if so how much?

Eric said...

400m jog to recover between miles. I don't really time the recovery, I just jog for 400m. It's probably about 2:15 or 2:30. Pfitzinger and Douglas recommend recoveries of about 50-90% of the interval time. I was just a little short of that. On 1200m and 800m repeats, I still do 400m jogs and it ends up being about 50-70% of the interval time.

When I do fast 400s or fast 200s, I recover fully, meaning I recover until I think I can run the next one as fast and easily as the first one. I got that idea from Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the distiller!)

rundanrun said...

Thanks, I may need to incorporate something like this in my training. Currently I walk/recover about 1:10 to 1:40 minutes after running a steep hill then flat ridge run that is about 750 meters. I really need to work in some full mile repeats if I am going to break 20 minutes on a 5K.