Workout Wednesday—Megan Kimmel's "1 in 5s"

Megan Kimmel keeps on impressing. Despite being somewhat disappointed with her 10th-place finish at last weekend’s Zegama-Aizkorri (still… crushing), Kimmel finished 3rd for women in the 2019 Transvulcania, broke the women’s record at the Pikes Peak Marathon in 2018 and dominated the 2018 Broken Arrow Skyrace. As a mountain athlete who can excel at 17 miles (women’s winner of the 2016 Run the Rut) or 50 miles (women’s 3rd in the 2017 North Face 50), Kimmel is nimble and knows how to dial her training.

“My running background,” she says, “has always involved full time work (and then some) while getting in workouts after the job when I am less than enthusiastic—yet thankful! If things are too hard or too complicated it’s easy to make excuses or to make it more draining than it needs to be.”

One of Kimmel’s favorite workouts is the 1 in 5.

“Throughout all of my working years,” she says, “this has been my favorite because it makes me feel good and it gives me energy, keeping intervals in the weekly rotation for life.

“I would consider this a maintenance interval, so when it comes time to train for a race, you may want to substitute this for a more race-specific interval, then pick it up again when you’re easing back into things post race.”

“1 in 5’s”:

Warm up for an appropriate distance or time, based on your own weekly volume.

1 minute as hard as you can with 4 minutes slow/recovery. Do 6 to 10 reps.

Cool down at a distance or time that is appropriate to your own weekly running volume.

“In general I do this once a week with a harder, more exhausting interval later in the week…or vice versa. Regardless of what distance you like to pursue, 10k-100 miles, I believe this interval is simply a good flush for the system.”