The Best Running Mix for Seven-Minute Miles

Covering even a single mile on foot in seven minutes is an impressive feat. According to Running USA, in 2012, over 6 million people finished 5K, or 3.1-mile, road races in the U.S. Their median pace was about 10 minutes per mile, and the median pace in longer events was predictably slower. It takes a mix of workouts to prepare you to run a seven-minute pace for any distance.

  1. Your Current Fitness

    • Before you can tackle running seven-minute miles, make an honest appraisal of your current capabilities and how much you'll need to improve to be able to steadily cover ground at roughly eight and a half miles an hour. If you can currently run a 5K in under 25 minutes, you can likely run at least one seven-minute mile and your aim should be to increase this to three or more miles. If you're new or coming back from a layoff and unable to run a mile in under 10 minutes, you'll need a few months of basic preparation to get yourself in position to shoot for a seven-minute pace.

    Basic Endurance

    • The cornerstone of any running program, regardless of how experienced or fit you are, is doing sustained aerobic training at an easy to moderate intensity level. Scott Jurek, a multi-time winner of the Western States 100-Mile trail race, suggests a minimum of six to 12 weeks of "base building" before your racing season begins so that you can maximallly develop your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems. Do the majority of this training at 50 to 70 percent of maximum effort, and aim to finish this training phase able to run an eight-minute mile pace for three or more miles without going all-out.

    Lactate Threshold Running

    • Once you've built an aerobic base, it's time to do more focused pace work at a higher effort level. Lactate threshold running is a superior means of getting lots of bang for your buck in terms of your time and effort. Also called tempo runs, these workouts consist of about 20 minutes of running at a pace you could sustain for an hour going all-out. According to Running Times, this pace is about 25 or 30 seconds slower than your 5K race pace and feels "comfortably hard" -- that is, you can't quite hold an ordinary conversation. Therefore, if you can ease your threshold pace into the seven-and-a-half-minutes-per-mile range, you can likely sustain seven-minute pace for at least three miles.

    Interval Workouts

    • Interval workouts represent an intense type of training and are the closest thing to racing you can do without actually entering a competitive event. According to Competitor Running, intervals -- usually done on a track -- consist of about two to three miles of below-race-pace running broken into segments of 200 to 1,600 meters separated by rest periods lasting half the duration of the fast repetitions. This means that if you want to run seven-minute miles for 5K or longer -- which requires a pace of 1:45 per 400 meters -- you should do workouts such as 12 times 400 meters in 1:40 with 50-second rests or five times 1,000 meters in 4:20 with 2:10 rests.