RUN A FASTER MILE

- Find a reasonably steep hill. Run up for 150m. Slowly walk down (3/4mins). The
session is over when you’ve completed six runs
- 100/150m hill – run up fast; jog for 15secs at the top (on flat) – sprint 100m. Repeat
four times.
- 40m; 80m; 150m; 200m – slow walk back recovery. 3 sets – 8mins btwn sets
- 8 x 250m – 5mins btwn
- 50m; 100m; 150m; 200m; 150m 100m; 50m; 250m – 4mins btwn
- 2 x (5 x 180m) – 4mins btwn reps. 10mins btwn sets
- 6 x 280m – 6 mins btwn
- 50m; 100m; 50m; 100m; 50m; 100m – 4mins bwtn. Repeat after 10mins
- 3 x (100m; 150m; 200m; 250m) – 4mins btwn reps. 8 mins btwn sets
- 3 x (4 x 150m) – 4mins btwn reps. 6mins btwn sets

Tip: When you find yourself slowing down near the top of the hill, rather than trying
to push and extend your stride, do the opposite, consciously shorten you stride and
move your arms quicker; this will increase your cadence, make you feel lighter, and
will increase your speed (for a while) – the equivalent of shifting to an easier gear
when cycling up a hill.

Where you live determines the nature of the hill; length, gradient and surface. This
may influence the design of the session. One could argue that flatter hills are easier,
but what makes a session tough is the effort you put in. However, a run of 100% effort
over 200m on a hill is different to 100% effort on the flat. There is a greater vertical
element involved, demanding different muscular qualities. So, it’s not just quality of
effort but the nature of the effort.

Note: We must assume there is some additional benefit to running hills otherwise
there would be no point in doing them. This is because every session has an
opportunity cost – you can’t keep adding in more sessions every week because you
have a finite energetic and recovery envelope (see ‘programme design’). So, when
you add a type of session you are subtracting (not doing) another. If you do hills you
are making a decision that it offers benefits greater than the session it’s replacing at
that point in time. If this wasn’t the case you wouldn’t do them (notwithstanding what
I wrote about uncertainty).

Programme design

The more serious you are about improving performance, the more the requirement for
a well-thought-out programme.

1 What do you want to achieve?
2 What are the components required to achieve it?
3 How should these components be organised to derive maximum benefit?

Numbers 2 & 3 are huge areas - far too much for me explain in at depth. I’ll quickly
highlight some considerations.

What do you want to achieve?

What you want to achieve is the primary goal. In this case, to run a faster mile. Your
primary goal generally involves the summation of separate smaller goals. What are
they? In the case of a mile; fat loss (maybe), extra speed, greater strength, more
endurance, correcting physical imbalances or weak areas, anaerobic buffering, and so
on. How much you want to mine each area depends on how much you want to
optimise your mile time.

Know what you want. Define your aims. Understand which areas you need to work
on. How quickly do you want to achieve your primary goal? Is it open-ended? How
motivated are you?

What are the components required to achieve it?

Once you’ve defined which areas you need to improve, you then find out which
exercises and modalities help you achieve it. This isn’t straightforward as there are
potentially hundreds of things which would be of benefit. Some of those things offer
significant improvements whilst others only marginal gains. Some you may be unsure
of. Which do you choose? What about lifestyle modifications such as extra sleep, less
alcohol, or a better diet? There is a world of non-training factors which will help or
hinder your training aims.

The components are all part of your training toolkit.

How should these components be organised to derive maximum benefit?

There are so many aspects to this that it makes my brain hurt. As previously stated,
the primary goal is the summation of separate smaller goals. Can you work on these at
the same time? An athlete’s year is divided into off-season, pre-season, in-season
(competition period) and post-season. They periodise their year according to the goal
of each of these periods. These blocks aren’t entirely discrete, in that a focus on
building endurance means no strength training or faster running; they are just an
emphasis (a greater proportional allocation of energy) on the particular goal of the
season. Each block builds on the previous with the goal of arriving at the competition
phase (the major competition of the year) in peak condition.

This is probably not necessary for you; however, your task is in deciding the dose,
type intensity, loading, volume and frequency of training sessions. Is there is enough
stress to adapt but not so much that you overtrain and get burnt out or injured? Should
you run four times a week or is that too much? How hard are you working? Where do
you fit in strength training? Should you include hills? What about adding in circuit
training? Rest and recovery - do you add in rest days, or light recovery sessions?
Should you have blocks of training (say, four weeks) then have an easy week? Do you
need to off-load or taper before a time-trial? Are you already fast and need to add
endurance? Or the reverse; you’re fit but need to emphasise the anaerobic? What are
your strengths and weaknesses? What are you doing in the rest of your life which may
impact your training programme? Are you doing other physical activities? These areas
are all the same that athletes and coaches consider.

As mentioned earlier, you have a finite energetic and recovery envelope – doing too
much means overreaching and eventually overtraining. Even one super-hard session
can lead to injury if you are not conditioned for it. However, not doing enough means
leaving potential improvements on the table. Note: this may not be a problem if your
one-mile or fitness goal has no real deadline. For you it is best to not to do too much
too soon. Better go slower and be healthy than rush and be injured.

I ran 4:21 in a road race at ~30yrs old, on (mostly) less than ten miles per week
training. This on a diet of, 1 fast intervals; 2 fast 3 to 5 milers; 3 being light and lean;
4 gym-based resistance training; 5 basic speed training (11.xx sec 100m). Then my
VO2max was around 65ml/kg/min. Looking back, the mistake I made was not
viewing longer and slower runs (more total mileage) as a necessary component of a
quality one-mile performance. I thought I could ‘blast’ my way through a mile. I had
the speed, morphology and basic strength to run a decent mile but fell short on aerobic
capacity. I always liked the running fast over slow; slow running seemed pointless to
me. This is an example of biases and ego getting in the way of what’s necessary.

Make an honest assessment of yourself. Find out what you need. Incorporate what you
need in the right amounts. Virtually impossible to get 100% right in reality, but you
can try!

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Right, I’m leaving it there. I am not writing out a training plan for you to follow. You
have enough information to devise one for yourself.

I hope this guide has helped you in understanding the requirements and training
needed to improve your one-mile time.

Thank you for reading, and good luck!