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How to run a mile?
baldbloke
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got a club 1-miler next week - a distance I have never raced in my entire life. anyone got any idea how to do this - just cane it all the way, or maybe run a kilometre at 5k race pace, then sprint...
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The best way to learn how to run mile races is to race them.
the distance is so short that intuitively pacing it should be easy enough. That means just go out at the pace you feel is optimum, which in a mile race will feel VERY intense.
in my case, this basically means flat-out and hang on. according to the mcmillan pace calculator, i should be able to run a mile at 3.55m/km pace.... i run flat-out intervals at 4.10m/km, and my best 5k is 4.22m/km, so - yikes - this one is going to hurt.
Given that a mile is too short a distance to check splits/make sense of HR data, etc, IMO the easiest way to think about it in terms of pacing is in relation to your interval training. Depending on rest period, number of reps, etc. something like kind of speed you hit when doing 400s is probably in the right sort of area.
Those figures above make sense to me; I think there are two reasons why the McMillan predictor may be a little bit ambitious. Firstly, presumably you're not specifically trained for racing over this distance, so you may struggle to convert your 5k time downwards. Secondly, (I'm fairly sure) McMillan changed its formula at some point, making shorter predictors even harder to hit. Maybe you're best off going out at something like 4.00m/km and trying to hold on as best you can. If you feel comfortable for most of the race with a fresh kick at the end, you haven't tried hard enough!
thanks for the advice...going to be hard, but looking forward to it!
Probably.
I'd say the best way to find your sustainable pace for a mile is to run speed-intervals competitively against other people. Analyse the data from your watch when you get home to try to pinpoint what that 'uncomfortable but doable' pace over a mile is for you.
Track races are very useful for building awareness of this too.
yep, definitely going to start doing some of my speedwork on the track from now on...chatting with some of the folks from my new club on sunday, several mentioned how useful 400s are - both for form AND speed...