Training

It sounds like you're beginning to answer your question. Your times in the longer distances are better than you mile, and you think you could handle 80/week. Go for it. By April you will be a demon--even in the mile/800. The coach will probably ask you to give the 4x400 a shot. Just work into it gradually. Skipping all that trackwork you could probably start out at 60/wk of distance. I wouldn't worry too much about numbers and stuff. As long as your pulse is between 140 and 160 for up to an hour you're doing base work. Go with how you feel. Don't let up much, and don't push too hard. Get some variety of terrain. Build up to your highest mileage(March?) about a month before competition starts.

That's the beauty of running-it's so simple.

Captain Haddock, how's the "comeback" going? What's the url of your website again?

Hope things are going well.

-LoneStarRunner

If I'm reading this correctly, you're doing about 50 miles/week, and you have 5 quality sessions in there? You can easily bump the mileage up by dropping several of the quality sessions. As you noted, conditions where you live are getting to the point where hard track sessions are going to be difficult. Just put in the miles over the next few months, and you'll get stronger. Not doing so many speed sessions will probably allow you to race better in the spring.

Question: In the past, how has your season progressed? In other words, did you run well at the beginning of the season and then struggle to hold on, or did you improve throughout the season and run your best at the end?

Three speed workouts, and two threshold workouts. Too much buddy. I ran 4:27, 9:32, 15:53 as a HS senior with :56 speed. You're probably just killing yourself with the workouts. Take a good 3 months and just build up mileage of varying distances and intensities. Threshold/tempo type stuff 2-3 times a week is a good idea. Then once you begin to add speedwork just do two workouts a week (maybe 1600 pace stuff and 5k or 3200 pace stuff). You'll likely be racing once a week too, so that's three hard days a week, which is all you need. Any more than that and you'll be too tired to race well.

Stunned

And while you are at it, don't forget that you need to get your 400m speed faster. Just run one workout per week of 8-10 x 100m at your current 400m speed, getting faster as time progresses (i.e. you'll run them now at 57s pace and later at 53-55s pace, depending on how far it takes you). Also, quite frankly, your 400m-1600m times don't show tremendous endurance. Average endurance (400m time/1600m time=.833) would put your mile time at 4:33. Definately keep up the threshold work.

But, 5 hard workouts a week does sound pretty tough-- you might try running just one faster fartlek/surge-interval workout per week, and then try to run the 3 x 15 mins threshold sessions at 5:50-55 pace, and the longer one closer to 6 min pace; this would probably be more specific to your actual LT in light of your given 5k pace of 5:20. If you have an HRM, try just running in the 87-90% zone on the 15 min reps and in the 85-87% zone one the longer LT run. The pace should get progressively faster as time goes by.

Question: In the past, how has your season progressed? In other words, did you run well at the beginning of the season and then struggle to hold on, or did you improve throughout the season and run your best at the end?

Well, I've been badly overtrained by my coach for my first three years so I don't really know how I would progress normally through a season.

And while you are at it, don't forget that you need to get your 400m speed faster

I've done tons of plyos and 100m work this past season and have improved my 400m, I used to be at 59 last season. I'm definitely going to keep working on my speed.

Also, quite frankly, your 400m-1600m times don't show tremendous endurance. Average endurance (400m time/1600m time=.833) would put your mile time at 4:33. Definately keep up the threshold work.

Like I said above my 400m time has improved a lot from the past season so I might be able to go 4:33 now, but I'm not sure. And I didn't mean that I had lots of endurance, just that I have more endurance than speed.

Also, I usually only do 4 workouts a week, and that's only if I have a week off without racing, so it isn't as bad as it sounds.

I think I'm going to start with 65 mpw on six days, but I'm having trouble on the intensity, what kind of pace should someone like me generally be doing during base training?

You are wanting to run 11 miles/day for 6 days a week. There are a couple of good threads out here on running base mileage and the effort involved.

Others can probably be more specific, but my opinion is that you need to run an effort (not pace) that will allow you to come the following day and run 11 miles. If you run so hard on one day that you can't come back the next day and run 11 again, you're working too hard.

Run easy and get the miles in. Don't feel the need to force a certain pace. Telling you a specific pace to run given the potential weather issues is probably not a good idea. For example, I normally train at 7:30-7:45/mile, but I ran for an hour in a heavy downpour last night with temps around 40. There's probably no way I was running the same pace as normal; however, the effort was the same.

You are at the same level I was when I was a senior in high school (20 years ago). I can tell you lots of things that you shouldn't do as I was definitely not trained properly. 4 speed sessions a week and 2-3 races on Saturday. It got ugly by the end of the season.

Stick with 2 workouts a week plus long run, or race and you will be fine. Doing more than 2-3 real hard workouts a week would only tire you. You said your coach is overtraining you. Then don't do so much. I think the main reason why you have such good 400m speed compared to your other races is that you are doing so much speed work so ur speed will be great but you're too tired to run better in the 1600/3200.

Try getting up to 80 on 7 days. Don't worry about the pace. Just run comfortably. If you feel good then close the last 30 minutes or so of a run pretty fast.

Stunned