I actually used a method similiar to this recently to raise my own mining...
Mine UNTIL you get a gain and STOP, move on to the next vein and mine UNTIL you get a gain.
From there utilizing gatherer addon, I would just create a kind of circular route and would be continuously moving from vein to vein for gains. Only downtime is when the vein is actually mined dry, and you have to wait for it to respawn.
Doing this, you can get 3-4 gains PER vein, and more on those juicy rich veins.