Has anyone followed any of the plans in this book with results to share? Did you improve over previous levels? Did you find another plan more beneficial? Been running forever and ran a 19:54 5k at age 51. Looking to bring that down and the 5k plan looks interesting. If that goes well I'm planning to try the HM plan.
i know a lot of people that swear by it. but you need to realize that nothing should be set into stone, and you should evaluate and adjust if necessary for any training plan.
Next week I will the multiple race program next week. However I think there is some huge errors in program description (p.156-157). The text and figure 7.1 are not corresponding.
Do you agree?
Yes, I've seen the errors you are referring to. Unfortunate as that is supposed to be the explanation of how to read all the plans. I read it that Tuesday is a total of 8 miles with the 5 x 1000m part of the 8 miles. Friday is 7 miles and the hills and strides are part of the 7. I do this workout where I run 5, do the hills, then the strides, then a short warm down to total around 7.
I'm in the 5k 40 mile plan working toward a 5k in October. I've never followed a formal training plan for the short races before - went more by feel.
@bluegill
Thanks for your interpretation.
What week in the 40 MPW program are you at?
How do you read Monday (race week) where is says Race pace + speed 6 miles, 4x100m strides, 800m @ 5K race pace
Do you agree that the total workout is 6 miles? For instance, a 2 mile warmp-up and a 2 mile cool-down. However, it doesn't sum up. 800m is 1/2 of a mile and 4x100 is 1/4 of a mile.
@error -
Just getting through week 2.
I interpret the total workout to be 6 miles with 800m at 5k race pace being the race pace part in the heading and the 4x100m strides to be the speed. The rest of the 6 miles to be a general aerobic. I know this reads like the previous weeks (where the heading says General aerobic + speed rather than Race pace + speed) but I'm thinking the heading of Race pace + speed is an error. No way I'd do around 6 miles at race pace 5 days before the goal 5k race of the whole plan. It's kind of confusing as weeks 8 and 9 have similar head scratchers for the Tuesday run headings.
The error on page 157 really has a ripple effect through all the plans for all the distances. I've authored books (technical, not athletic) and my experience was they shipped them overseas to typeset by people where English was not their first language. Gave me a mad scramble to try and catch the typesetter introduced errors prior to final print. I wouldn't be surprised if this book had a similar situation.
I'm a pretty big fan of Pfitz, having done his marathon plans in the past and exceeded my expectations.
Currently on the 8k/10k high mileage plan and finding it easy-ish compared to his marathon programs which always left me tired. So far a Masters PB in a half-marathon I ran while on the 10k program, but I'm not all the way through to my goal 10k race. My one nagging worry is that there isn't enough true speedwork in the program. I am killing the tempo runs, but I'm not sure it's going to be enough.
Hi,
How did everyone get on following the plan?
I followed his plan in mid-40s following a lengthy layoff from an injury. I think it was perfect for that time. I'd been out for the better part of 3 years and almost entirely for the previous year. Went from 0 to 40 miles a week over about a month, as my build up. And then held at 40 or so for another month before starting the half marathon program. I ran up to about 50 or 55 miles during the training, and raced 17:40 5K, 28:40s 5 mile, and 1:20 for my goal half marathon.
I also relied on the marathon plan (with modifications) from that book for a full mountain/trail marathon that was about 4 months following the comeback half marathon, and ran an equivlalent (based on comparative times of other runners from that race to city marathons such as NYC, Chicago, or Boston) to low 2:50s.
Other than the taper schedules, which I follow very closely, I don't follow his exact schedule, but frequently refer to the book for insights and general ideas.
I followed Pfizinger's 30-40 miles program with a lot of changes. For example, I don't why he adds an long endurance run day after a hard intervall sesion. It made no sense to me since I think it's better to rest or do cross-training the day after. My key sessions during a typical training week
*5x1000m with 2-3 min rest.
*3x10min (about 2.6 km per 10 min) with 2 min rest
* speed session 3x5x300m with 1 min rest between reps and 3 min between sets
* Easy run for 45-50 minutes. The pace was always slow, around 5.00-5.15 min/m or if you rather want it in mile/km (slower than 8 min/mile).
* Longer run for 60-75 min around same pace as easy run.
I avereged around 25-30 MPW.
Before this training approach I ran my best 5K in 18.06. Then I got injured, so I slowly started to jog in February and after 4 weeks I started the doing the workouts mentioned above.
After 12 weeks I'm down to 17.28 min.
*
Sorry for the typos. Writing on my smartphone.