Workout of the Week: A Little Bit of Everything

Chris Miltenberg, the Director of Track & Field and Cross Country at the University of North Carolina, told me that his teams refer to themselves as S.H.T, which stands for Second Half Team. Regardless of the race, the Tarheels take a tremendous amount of pride in competing well over the second half of any distance. Case in point: Watch here as Ethan Strand competes in the mile at Boston University on February 1, 2025. He’s in fourth place with a few laps to go and is still in third at the bell before he ratchets up the intensity a couple notches. On the last lap, Strand surges to the front and stays there to win the race in 3:48.32, making him the first collegian ever to run under 3:50.

This was not an accident. It’s something Strand and the rest of his Tarheel teammates practice in nearly every workout, including one Miltenberg likes to call “A Little Bit of Everything,” a foundational session for milers and 10K runners alike. It starts at threshold pace and ends down around 1-mile pace. “As we get to these higher intensity paces late in the workout,” he explains, “breaking the reps down enables us to run these goal paces while carrying a lot of the early volume in your legs but not deeply anaerobic for long bouts, which becomes the danger zone.” Here are the details:

WHAT: 2 miles @ threshold pace w/3 minutes walk-jog recovery; 2 x 1 mile @ 10K pace w/2 minutes walk-jog recovery between reps (3′ walk-jog recovery after the second mile); 2 x 800m @ 5K pace w/ 1:30 walk-jog recovery between reps (3′ walk-jog recovery after the second 800); 4 x 400m @ 3K–>1 mile pace w/1 minute walk-jog recovery between reps

WARMUP/COOLDOWN: Warm up before the workout with 15-20 minutes of easy running followed by a set of drills and 4 x 15-20 second strides (i.e., accelerate for a few seconds, spend the middle seconds at near-top speed, and then gradually decelerate to a jog over the final few seconds. Catch your breath for 40-60 seconds between strides). Cool down after the workout with 5-10 minutes of easy running.

WHY: “Almost every workout we do is reinforcing raising intensity throughout,” explains Miltenberg. “Your body learns that habit pattern and will wire it in as you reinforce it more. Even if you are going to run dead even splits in a 5K or 10K, you’re going to need to raise your intensity each split to maintain that pace so emphasizing that all the time is foundational for us…This workout is a replication of that concept. Done right, you’ll recover fast and not be beat up because you were never deeply anaerobic for long bouts.”

WHERE: Ideally you’ll do the 2-mile off the track (at UNC, they do the 2-mile on a 1K gravel loop outside the track) and the rest of the workout on the track. That said, you can do all of it on the roads, treadmill, or smooth trail if a track isn’t available or those options are more preferable to you.

WHEN: This is a foundational workout for athletes focusing on anything from the 1500m/mile up to 10K that can be done in the early to middle part of every training block.