Masters training

Your improvement will go faster if you like me ( and all runners I've coached) put in a maxVO2 interval of shorter reps 200m-400m and a lactate threshold (LT2) interval as well e.g 400m-1000m reps in your training week.Good luck! 🇸🇪🧙‍♂️🇸🇪

It really depends on what kinds of races you're targeting. Are you looking at a marathon, 5Ks, or everything from road miles on up?

If you've been doing 30 mpw, getting back to race shape won't be that hard - just keep in mind that "race shape" now is not what it was 10 years ago. Don't try to match your training or times from back then.

Once you decide what race you're training for, don't jump into full workouts right away. Introduce basic surges or stretches of faster running gradually before hammering yourself with 10 x 400. Or even 6 x 400.

As the workouts get more serious, recovery gets more critical. It's normal and even necessary for your pace on easy days to get a lot slower.

You may not be able to follow a cookie-cutter plan that you find in the back of a book. It's important that you understand the physiology of training and why you're doing a particular workout for when you need to adapt. The consequences of trying to force a workout before you're ready for it can be a lot higher now than they were 10 years ago. Or maybe not! You might not have hit that point yet. But at some point you will.

It depends on what you plan to race. I don't think 200s or 400s are necessary to start. Strides will suffice.

Depending on how you define "tempo", 30 mins seems like a lot to start with. I think you're better off starting with a 15 to 20 total minutes of a broken tempo and progressing from there. Play around with the amount of rest.

Like me, you're "old", and it's going to take some time to figure out what works at this point of your life. Things that were never a problem before like to pop up and cause problems, so it's better to work in things slowly.

Lastly, if you're not doing some kind of strength work, I would recommend finding some routine you can do. It doesn't have to be a lot, but I believe it will help.

I ran lifetime PRs at 39. In the last 5 years, I've had two 3 month breaks due to injury.

My focus has been 5k-half marathon, and what I've learned is that:

1. I can't run more than 75 miles/week year round.

2. Adding small workouts on top of runs works better than big workouts. For example, now I'd do 6x 400 after running7-10 miles instead of doing 12-16x400.

3. In general, I can get away with less speedwork, so long as I don't totally neglect it.

4. Injuries jump up without warning and can be mysterious.

5. There's no rhyme or reason to when you feel good (or bad).

This is fantastic, thanks for the replies so far! Going to start with 15-20 min of broken tempo and add in some strides after easy runs a couple days a week to start. Will build out a plan from there that's a bit less intense than I was envisioning. Getting the sense that setting realistic expectations based on the reality of my age is at least as important as the workouts. My hope is to get strong enough for to race 5k in March without hurting myself and let that dictate what comes next.