HRE wrote:
I have a friend got a top ten finish at Boston in the mid 70s on three or four days a week and no intervals. He did a 20 on the weekend and a couple 10s at something like his marathon pace. Some weeks he'd do another 10 or sometimes a pretty hard 5.
If you look at what guys did before WWII you'll find a lot of four day a week runners. It was commonly believed that running was hard on your heart so they'd only run every other day.
This is very interesting. My best performances 1500-10k have always come off of 50-55 mpw with a day off. I have tried long stretches at 70-80 mpw and it never made ME any faster. As I’m starting to prioritize other things in life, as well as thinking about making my marathon debut later this year, this style of training is really appealing to me. I always found the one day off per week to be such a profound help to my performance, so if that’s the case then why not take 2 or 3 days off per week while increasing the volume/quality of the other days?