im focusing on the 70.3 distance this year, and i would like to know how many and how fast i should be doing my mile repeats. my open half pb is a 1:21 and 70.3 best run is a 1:30. right now the most repeats ive been doing is 8, but im sure ill do more later in the year, and ive been doing them in approx 5:45 pace, with 2 min rest after each one. any feedback?
I ran a 1:20 at Oceanside a couple weeks back and my stand-alone 1/2 PR is 1:16. Leading into O-side, I did up to 6-7 1-mile repeats around a 5:30 on 1:00 rest. The goal however, wasn’t to destroy myself - instructions were to leave enough in the tank so that I could have done two more repeats at the same pace. Then moved up to 2-mile repeats, but never did more than 3 sets in a given workout. Those were on 2:00 rest - again, w/o crushing myself into oblivion on the pacing.
My 2 best open 1/2 marathons are almost exactly the same as Steve’s. A big thing for me has been realizing what systems I want to train during the workout itself. If it is VO2 max I would drop the distance to 1200m repeats but up the pace fractionally.
If you want to keep the mile repeats going I would go to the 1min rest interval and pull the pace back a bit to make it manageable. I am a pretty big believer in Jack Daniel’s philosophy that unless you can run 5.00min/miles don’t run miles for VO2 max intervals - save them for threshold work at an easier pace.
Also, if you figure that VO2 max or Threshold work should be about 8-10% of weekly volume it means you are up there in the high 70-80 mile per week range for total run miles. I once did a similar workout while running 40miles per week and had a string of poor races. Taking the above approach saw things improve dramatically.
Good luck with the tweaking - that level of commitment is tough work!
about 6:08min/mi w/ 1 min recovery. repeat 4-5 times
I’m scheduled to run mile repeats this afternoon. You guys are all much faster than I am as I can do a 1:43 1/2 marathon. My 5K pace is about 6:50min/mile. I was planning on running the mile repeats on 6:30 with 2 min break. Is that in the right ballpark?
Ditto on the replies from Sub and Seasons Change, the question to ask, “what is the purpose of this run?”. If it is to improve your threshold ability then listen to Seasons Change but if it is to improve your VO2 max then Sub is right on. I would recommend reading "Daniels’ Running Formula, he outlines all of this and more.
I am no expert, but read these above posts again. I highly doubt that you can do 6:30/mi 1mi repeats if your 5k pace is 6:50/mi. Instead, find VDOT table, plug your most recent race time and go by what it tells you.
If you are doing 1mi repeats, I will assume that at your level, you are working on LT, go by T-pace with 1min recovery. If you are aiming to do VO2 max, for you, drop it to 800m or 1000m with equal time recovery. Again, read Daniels on I-pace work.
I will let you know tomorrow. Going for4-5 at 5.45-50 pace on 1 minute rest. Best 1/2 open time is 1.22 and tri normally about 1.25. That was during Ironman years. Plan on being faster this year and the longest race probably will be Racine. Goal time 1.20-22. Those mile repeats should be dropping to 5.35.40 pace in 6 weeks or so.