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Mastering the Mile-Repeat Workout

by Adolfo Salgueiro | Dec 17, 2024 | Article, List, Science

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

While there is no magic workout, the long interval workout is mandatory if you want to run longer and faster. There are many iterations of the long interval, but to me, there is nothing like the mile-repeat. It is challenging yet not unconquerable. It is long but not unending. You can start with a few reps and progress to as many as you can handle. If performed at the right pace, you can recover and do it again right away. And if all that wasn’t enough, it hits all the systems.

Mile-repeats can be executed on track or road and properly executed, it will do wonders for your speed and endurance (Photo: Ernest Flowers, Pexels)

I remember reading Alberto Salazar’s autobiography many years ago. He was adamant that this was his key workout from his high school days to his time at the top of the world’s elite marathoners. Since then, I have performed it and prescribed it to my trained runners. The results have always been palpable.

A mile repeat improves your cardiovascular system while upgrading your endurance and speed. Cadence is increased, mental toughness is developed, and physiological indicators such as VO2Max and lactate threshold are enhanced. Because you are performing at a high rate of energy consumption, the brain ensures that wasted movement is kept to a minimum, resulting in better running form.

Mile repeats are more than hauling ass one mile as fast as you can go. Anyone can do that. The key is to understand the purpose of the mile you are running. This will determine the pace and effort in which it should be performed.

Benefits of mile repeats include:

► Speed Increase: When performed at race pace or even faster, you are stressing your multiple systems and teaching your body to withstand harder efforts for longer. You are also teaching it how to recruit additional muscle fibers when the usual ones are beaten up.

► Pace learning: Because we run mostly at an easy pace to maintain and improve our aerobic base, learning how to reach, feel, and maintain our race pace is key. Mile repeats are a perfect way to get there before starting to extend the race-pace mileage. The key is to be constant at the desired pace and not believe that faster is necessarily better.

► Endurance improvement: Running roughly at the pace you could sustain running all-out for one hour (Tempo) will improve the amount of oxygen you can consume at max effort (VO2Max) and push the line in which your body is unable to use lactate to fuel itself and become unable to clear it, thus triggering fatigue (Lactate Threshold).

The keys to the mile-repeats workout are being constant and keep the movement going (Photo: Mikhail Nilov, Pexels)

In a recent article in the Marathon Handbook website, Amber Sayer stated a great point to be considered when executing this workouts: “The longer your race (half marathon or marathon, for example), the earlier in your training program you can do mile repeats at race pace, because a mile is a significantly smaller percentage of the overall distance.”

And mile repeats don’t need to be performed on a track necessarily. I wrote a post on that issue, which you can read by clicking here.

Executing your mile repeat workout safely and properly requires certain preparation:

► Know and understand your workout: It is imperative to be prepared for a difficult workout, so you won’t have the mental space to improvise. Know how many reps you have, what your recovery time is, what is the pace and what is the purpose of this workout. This will predispose you to a successful effort.

► Warm- up properly: You will be performing a hard workout. You must prepare your body for it not only to avoid injury (as if that weren’t enough reason) but also to make sure you can reap maximum benefits. If you want to read more about the value of the warm-up, click here.

► Keep it constant: Running the first 400 meters in 1 minute, 2nd 400 in two minutes, 3rd in 3 minutes, and 4th in four is not a 10-minute mile. It is a shitty, worthless mile. Maintain your effort and pace as consistently as possible. This is what’s going to make you better, not a one-off 400-meter stretch at world record pace. Consistency and frequency are what will reap the most benefit for your effort.

► Continuous movement: You will be tired once your mile is done. Of course, don’t stop, collapse, or sit down. Keep moving. This is the closest you will replicate the demands of a race. I recommend a light jog in between miles, but if this is too much, walk until you catch your breath and then jog. The point is to continue moving forward as you recover and get ready for the next rep.

► Focus on your current rep: Stay focused on the mile repeat you are executing right now. Don’t dwell on the last one being too fast or too slow. Don’t think about what will happen after this one. You are executing this one now, and it must be executed properly. Thus, it is the only one that matters.

► Cooldown: You performed a hard workout. Your body is in overdrive. You are tired, exhilarated, most likely amid a runner’s high. This is not the time to jump in the car and go home. A mile or two of easy running will help blood flow. Muscle recovery, and removal or metabolic byproducts. If you want to read more about the value of the cooldown, click here.

Make sure you add this workout to your training repertoire. The benefits will surprise you.

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The Value of the Cooldown

by Adolfo Salgueiro | Sep 14, 2021 | Article, Exercises, Science

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

In last week’s post we talked about the value and benefits of a proper warmup. This week we are going to delve into its first cousin: The Cooldown. The benefits of taking some time to regroup, especially after a hard workout, can’t be underestimated. Getting into your car and driving home right after your run should be minimized, if not extricated completely from your training routine.

The cooldown is the portion of your training that comes right after the hard work. Not only slowing down the last few minutes or miles but also mobility and stretching routines, breathing exercises and debriefings that occur once the hard part of your training program for the day has been performed. This will allow blood to return from the muscles to your heart, the excess lactate to be flushed out of your system, and start the process of getting you heart rate, body temperature and blood pressure back to their baselines.

The cooldown is the proper time for static stretching excises that should not be performed during warmup (Photo by Marcus Aurelius, Pexels.com)

According to Penn State’s Extension website, “Completing a cool-down is not only beneficial immediately after the completion of exercises but also helps prepare your body for future workouts. By stretching out those muscles and properly cooling down, you will be more prepared to exercise sooner rather than later. If your body does not cool down properly, it will take longer for you to feel up to exercising again.”

Steve Magness, former coach at the University of Houston and in my opinion, one of the brightest scientific minds in running, stated that the cooldown has two main goals: A – Returning your body and mind to a baseline, normal state. B – Assist in your body’s adaptation to the stress of the workout you just performed.

“You are shifting your body away from this breakdown-and-consume mode to a repair, rebuild, recover mode – explains Magness – You are trying to decrease the amount of stress hormones, which are great to prepare your body to do crazy things, and you are trying to get recovery hormones, such as testosterone, back.”

The cooldown is especially important after a hard race or a hard workout where you have almost depleted your body’s resources. For long-distance runners, a speed workout or a long run with a progression or pace intervals is a perfect example of when not to skip a cooldown, so you can reap all the benefits of what you just did.

“Even if you go for a 3-mile easy run –continues Magness— you are doing it in a state where your lactate is probably elevated, your glycogen levels are depleted, especially in certain muscle fibers; fatigue is lingering, etc. And you are still doing some work, so, because of that, you will be getting some kind of training adaptation.”

In a June 2021 article from Runner’s World, Ally Mazzerole, a breath work teacher at a mindfulness studio, recommends breathing exercises once your workout is over. And it doesn’t have to become an additional time-consuming element of your routine.

Simple breathing exercises can help you cool down without adding too much time to your workout (Photo: Monstera, Pexels.com)

“Breathwork can easily be incorporated during your cooldown stretching”, says Mazerolle. “It can be as simple as taking 10 to 15 slow inhales through your nose followed by slow exhales through your mouth, or something more intentional like box breathing, where you inhale for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, exhale for four counts, and hold there for four counts, then repeat.”

“This kind of practice is so important for runners because if running puts your body in a stress (or fight or flight) response. Breathwork stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, relaxing the heart rate and signaling the body that it’s time to rest and digest and recover,” says Mazerolle. And that recovery period is when your body rebuilds and repairs itself from the stress of exercise.

When it comes to a longer cool down after a particularly hard race or workout, Jonathan Marcus, Head Coach at High Performance West, insists that it shouldn’t be perceived like additional mileage: “As we are coming back of a workout or a race, where we go in crescendo from low to high, now we are going from high to low, so the flush is an in-between bridge. It can be a very easy running, jogging, or walking. It is this ingenious workaround to get more of a training effect in a low intensity state. Sometimes it is the most difficult part of the workout because you are tired and fatigued.”

Of course, if you are not coming from a grueling training session, then a 10–15-minute jog, plus mobility and flexibility drills should suffice.

So, just as the warmup last week, make sure you make time for the cooldown. The benefits and the science back them up.

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