lexel wrote:
I respect your effort and performance.
However, i see nothing special in your plan. You have 1 long run (20 km) plus 3 work-outs (45 min tempo, 15x1km and 30x400m). You train like a pro basically.
Where is new stuff? I see a basic plan, besides the triples.
Do you really feel a difference between say 20x400m to 30x400m?
I realised one thing from this thread from the OP and that is the better base makes the recovery faster and with faster recovery comes higher improvement rate, given you take advantage of it. One way is to do workouts more frequent, another way is to dig deeper within one workout.
Research have at least shown that the same volume of high intensity distributet as more, less often gives larger adaptations than less, more often. Adaptation follows what is the normal and if you do not move outside the normal enough, adaptation will be limited. This experiment has increased milage a lot, that is the first un-normal, and this has led to an ability to increase the load of the workouts, I guess both since fatigue sets in later in the workout (can do more) and recovery is faster (can cope with 30x and not only 20x)
It could be just this experience is the main reason for the improvement (we will never know since this is impossible to prove). Maybe due to the larger workout volume still recovering, the improvement came along? I personally think it is more than that, but cannot believe the larger workouts are not a big contribution. There are other adaptations from more volume which depend upon what OP had not yet developed and had in his genetic reserve.