I have always enjoyed making my own training plan and improve based on it. Now I have been back into training after some years off since 2 years ago. The milage has slowly progressed and I now use on avg 7-8 hours per week in quite intense training. Mostly running, but increasingly cross-training with the bike. I am soon 50 so just running a lot does not feel good so that is why cross-training has been introduced, with success I think.
2 events made me change plans lately.
The first was the experience of Karoline Grøvdal in Norway and her success getting back after injury and now running faster than ever. Se runs max 100km per week and does classic nordic roller ski cross training (I believe that is very specific for running too). I do not do roller skis, but like to bike so I have started considerable time riding, some 40% of the training time.
The second is based on research by B. Rønnestad on block training. Micro-blocks of 1-2 weeks duration. I use 1 week blocks focussing on high, moderate and low intensity. High is at and above threshold, moderate is at and below threshold and low intensity is easy/moderate. He shows that how you organise the higher intensity within let us say 4 weeks has something to say for the improvement. By doing one week of high intensity and 3 weeks of low intensity (with some maintenance), the improvement is superior to an even distribution. Block training has its challenges, for instance risk of injury, but I feel combined with cross training and limiting running milage, I can reduce this well.
I have now followed this approach for 3 weeks, being testing a low, moderate and now a high intensity block. Some observations:
1. Biking demands a lot from my glutes, hamstrings and (upper) calves and riding much more and even doing threshold and power sprint work has definately increased my strength in those muscles. My glute/pirformis/hamstring/sciatic nerve trouble have improved so much I barely have symptoms now. This strength also have transfered into my running form/gait which is interesting.
2. Biking needs high power and doing double days I need to do running first and biking second, or else I lose power and stride length when running. Hard running can also impact my biking power, but that is of no concern since I am a runner
3. I am running my hill sprints faster so the biking shows signs of increasing my power. I have deliberately biked with a powerful lower cadence like when cyclists do tempos and push hard all the way. I have done 10/20/30s sprints during easy biking to build anaerobic power and it seems to work, without needing much recovery
4. I can train a lot (for me) and still have soft and nice running legs. Of course they can get a little heavy, but pains and stiffness is much reduced. For example I can do double days in the easy block as 50min biking in the morning and 50min running in the evening, still with nice legs. But also I can feel the "long run" effect in the evening despite just running 50min.
5. High intensity block have been killer training. In 6 days I did 5 hard running workouts and 4 bike thresholds. Interesting to observe I can go on and on, increasingly feeling the need for recovery but the more days the stronger I felt. Since I will recover in the long period to the next block I do not think this is damaging.
6. Moderate blocks have been similar, but working a lot at HM/M-pace is really not a problem as recovery seems quite short
7. Easy/low blocks are very nice, still a lot of training, but when compared to high/mod blocks they are very comfortable
8. Just easy training makes my legs really sleepy and they need a day or 2 of hard training to wake up
I have not been able to improve my 5k pace in the last year even if the threshold pace which I can hold for a long time indicates I should run faster. It might be natural for a man in my age to have a challenge with VO2 max paces, but let us see if digging deep in high intensity blocks can do something about that ability...