Not An Expert wrote:
You’re getting burnt out. Run every other day for 30-45 minutes this week and until New Year’s and don’t sweat the holiday food—enjoy a bit of a break. If you feel good in any of these runs, feel free close the second half of the run faster, or include 4-5 x 15-20 second mile-to-800 effort pickups in the second half of the run. But no need to push it.
When you get back to it, yes, take Mondays off, and don’t do mile-pace 400s. A standard week could look like this:
M— off
Tu- AM- 5 easy PM- 5 w/ 5-6 x hard short hills (8-10s steep uphill run hard, 3-4 minutes easy jogging in between) for speed development (and do your circuit exercises)
W- AM- 3 easy PM- 7 (1 warm-up, 4 tempo, 2 warm-down)
Th- AM- 5 easy PM- 5 easy w/ 5-6 x 100m strides between 800m and 400m effort
F- AM- 3 easy PM- 7 (2 warm-up, 12 x 200m starting @ mile effort and picking up a little bit the last 3-4 w/ 200 slow jog (60-75s) recovery, 2 warm-down)
Sat- 5 easy (and do your circuit exercises), no double
Sun- 10-13 miles with the first half easy and the second half faster if you’re feeling good, no double
This, with a down week (during which you drop a couple of your doubles, do only 50-67% of the volume of the workouts, drop your long run to 55-65 minutes) every 3-4 weeks, should be pretty repeatable for 2-3 months. If you feel yourself adjusting to the workload, you can lengthen your PM runs on your easy double days and your AM runs on your workout days by 1-2 miles and/or add 1-2 miles to your tempo run. Don’t lengthen the long run or add volume to the speed development stuff (strides, hills, 200s), as you don’t want to overcook it with that stuff in January.
Make sure you’re sleeping and eating plenty, and do some stuff other than running, both physical and mental (read a book, play an instrument, join a non-sports extracurricular club, hang out with friends when it’s safe and play pick-up basketball or frisbee, etc). Enjoy the process, and know that this routine will have you well set-up to rub *fast* when real, race-specific work starts after spring break.