SomeBlokeFromTheInternetz wrote:
My advice is to stay away from those long marathon tempos. First, you can burn out if you keep doing them for a long period. It is ok to do a long hard run every now and then, but it shouldn't be a staple workout until the very last weeks of your training cycle. Like I said, there are easier gains left to pick.
As you mentioned you are still not endurancy developed, I would suggest to decrease the quality (thus no long tempos) and increase the quantity gradually. focus on building a decent base now during the winter. keep a few strides or fartleks here and there for leg turnover but mostly run easy miles. spread the miles through your week and keep one LR per week.
Very sound advice, thanks. Building mileage makes sense, though oddly enough I have always been worried about overuse injuries by doing too many miles around same pace.
I capped out at 50 mpw, with 12 LR, 8 on T/Thu/Sat, 4 on M/F and 3/3 double Wed. I do like variety (long runs at 7:30 down to 7:00, tempos at 6:30-6:40 and reps at 6:00 or faster) and no "middle land" mileage at 8:00 (easy runs for me means 9 min/mi!!).
Perhaps the Winter will be a good time to run by HR (Hadd?) over 16 weeks or so and just vary HR-based paces a bit every day.
Any other program out there for winter base building? Say moving in from an average of 40-45 (peak 50) to circa 55-60, probably on singles?
My limitations are lack of strength in late marathon stage (hence 126 half->317) and absolute lack of speed (1910 5k, cannot run even 200 at sub 5 pace etc.)