training advice: long runs on saturday or sunday?

Looks to me like both plans are equally monotonous. Take your pick.

well, if you must choose between the two plans above, i guess mine looks the most like plan B.

so here goes:

set your running week to be monday through sunday. on sunday night decide how many miles you are going to run that week. go out and run monday through saturday, sometimes twice a day, sometimes once a day. on saturday night, add up your miles and see where you are at. on sunday, if you need 5 miles to meet your mileage goal, run 5 miles; if you need 15, then run 15.

don't get caught up in the set plan of what you will do every day for the rest of your running life. feel it. plans are good for injury and burning out.

What ever plan you decide to go with your long run of the week should be substancially longer than any other with the next day short and easy for recovery. It is not really a recovery run unless it is much shorter than any other run that you do.

I think you should go 69min. on m-w-f, 71min on t,t,sat and 90 on sun. That way you'll be getting a shorter recovery run between longer runs!!!!!

I do two harder workouts a week (fartlek, intervals, hills, whatever?) and always follow those up with an easy longer run. So, in effect I get two longer runs, two hard workouts and three easier days. About 70-80 miles per week on average. Easy are easy! Maybe 6-10 and longer are 10-15. Works for me, but it took time for me to get used too.

I do feel that your long run should be significantly longer than your easy days though. That would be 90-120 minutes in my case. Good luck with whatever you choose!

If you are religious then running on Sunday is a huge mistake! Surely you'll go straight to hell.

If you aren't religious then its no problem. I prefer long sunday runs because there is low traffic volumes and it is sunnier than saturdays. I find that thrashing out a threshold on the monday works a treat too.

Is this a joke? After the first week, there is no difference whatsoever other than the 5min "break" you may give yourself once each week with plan A.

Ha ha.. now that I read it again, you ARE joking... it's just a little difficult to tell as we don't know who you're poking fun at.

i think the way to go is to do this:

M- medium long (maybe 2 runs)

T- recovery

W- medium long in base periods or tempo/wkout in season

T- recovery

F- medium long (maybe 2 runs)

S- medium long in base or tempo/wkout/race in season

S- long run (15% of weekly mileage)

--This is a very good system i think which allows plenty of rest at appropriate times, it doesn't allow for 'too many' intervals (only 1 wkout in a week with a race). Also it allows your mileage to get high and have your oh-so-important long run every week. peace.