Four-Week Running Program For Mile Test

[coachdavidh]

For all of your athletes who need to prepare for the mile test coming up this fall, XL Athlete has created a four-week running program designed to get your athletes in shape and perform better on the mile test. It is also an AWESOME way to quickly get your athletes in shape, as it is a heck of a conditioning workout. The program has running for six days a week, with sprints, intervals, and distance all worked in. I think you'll like it. And as always, its on-the-house!

Here is the printable sheet:

Four-Week Running Program For Mile Test

Hope that helps!
Coach D

 

[Moz]

For all of your athletes who need to prepare for the mile test coming up this fall, XL Athlete has created a four-week running program designed to get your athletes in shape and perform better on the mile test. It is also an AWESOME way to quickly get your athletes in shape, as it is a heck of a conditioning workout. The program has running for six days a week, with sprints, intervals, and distance all worked in. I think you'll like it. And as always, its on-the-house!

Here is the printable sheet:

Four-Week Running Program For Mile Test

Hope that helps!
Coach D

What % effort are you looking for in the 300's / 400's and half mile and longer runs?

As the energy contribution in the mile is about 78% I would have thought you'd want to be including more of that work. E.g. lactate threshold / vo2 max.

Forgive me but this program looks like it's inviting injury - plus do you recommend that many hard sessions in the last week before the mile test?

 

[coachdavidh]

What % effort are you looking for in the 300's / 400's and half mile and longer runs?

As the energy contribution in the mile is about 78% I would have thought you'd want to be including more of that work. E.g. lactate threshold / vo2 max.

Forgive me but this program looks like it's inviting injury - plus do you recommend that many hard sessions in the last week before the mile test?

This program is not for track milers. It is for other sports who require a mile test during pre-season testing. Hence, the relative ambiguity when it comes to intensity effort percentages.

And as for injury, in the 20+ years of experience working with high school, college, and professional athletes, we are quite confident that this works well and avoids injury. At least, it has for the hundreds upon hundreds of athletes we have trained.

 

[subaru3169]

Forgive me but this program looks like it's inviting injury - plus do you recommend that many hard sessions in the last week before the mile test?

tbh, i really don't think it's that intense.. in tennis, we run anyway so dashing a couple hundred yards shouldn't be that big of a deal

track and field ppl who train for sprints, now THAT is difficult stuff

 

[Moz]

tbh, i really don't think it's that intense.. in tennis, we run anyway so dashing a couple hundred yards shouldn't be that big of a deal

track and field ppl who train for sprints, now THAT is difficult stuff

Yes, perhaps it's just because I'm old! Although it's reasonably intense, so if you haven't been doing some of that stuff as a prerequisite it is introducing an unnecessary level of risk in my opinion.

But to get improvement from any training requires the body to first breakdown and then recover - hopefully establishing a new floor of fitness before the next cycle. The body will not recover while you continue to break it down the following day and the day after and the day after. This is the hard-easy principle which is the cornerstone of almost every successful training program on earth.

Plus any fitness benefits of the final week wouldn't be realised until after the test has taken place - hence my original question about why the final week involves so much hard training when the body should be recovering or practising goal pace running to get the best time. (hard-hard-hard-easy).

Irrespective of it being just a 4 week prep plan it's unclear what some of these workouts are trying to achieve physiologically - particularly as it's down to the athlete to decide on paces / recovery mechanism (things that I would have thought are essential - unless it's all as fast as you can). They look as though someone has sat down and written down a series of semi-progressive sprint workouts designed to get someone out of breath. It bears more similarity to a 200 or 400m program.

BUT I have never trained someone in 4 weeks for a mile test, so I assume a great deal of trial and error has gone into it. The OP probably wasn't after a critique anyway so perhaps it's all immaterial.