going faster miles an hour wrote:
Stone: Trying to guesstimate: with the pacing you’re doing, it looks like you’re ending up with a decent amount of volume in that “steady” zone – faster than easy but slower than or just approaching MP? With Mrs. Stone’s training, I would be curious to hear more about how you’re approaching things with an athlete who is hitting best-ever workouts that far out from a goal race. It’s great in terms of building fitness, but seems like it could require some thoughtful planning in terms of peaking (which I’m sure you’re doing).
Sorry for the late reply. Hopefully you see this. Your best guesstimate is right. As it turns out, the back to back cruise interval sessions that I have been doing lately are roughly in the neighborhood of a marathon pace that I think I can currently run. It’s an interesting stimulus, having higher volume of steady to MP work versus more intense 10K to T work. But I am enjoying it and it seems to be working thus far.
As far as Mrs. Stone’s fitness goes, we deliberately took a break from intense workouts after her half marathon and 5K PR performances in November. She then kind of discovered on her own an affinity for high-volume. We kept some quality during that high volume period but not a whole lot.
In essence, she established for about two months the classic Lydiard base. I think her workouts now are just a reflection of the monster base work she has put in the last two months. I’m not so much worried about her peeking too early because we are really just introducing the high quality again.
It’s hard to fathom, but I think she is just getting better and better at the marathon distance as she gets older. I wish I could say the same for myself, haha.
Actually, it is also a reflection of her amazing consistency for the past year and a half. Uninterrupted training, no injuries (knock wood), great race results, and weeks upon weeks of putting in the work.