Is this a good program?

Your patient approach seems to make the most sense. Be careeful about running too fast for your general aerobic runs. With your goal times, you should be running a little slower and then going a little longer. If I were you, I would do 15 miles on 5 days and cross train on the other two. That way your average workout is more like 30 minutes rather than 15. Good Luck

Sounds good to me. Try doing the time trial every two weeks rather than four.

Just one question. Before you were injured, did you do high mileage (i.e. 80 mpw)? If so, you might want to consider bumping your mileage up a bit faster.

For example:

Week mpw mile time trial

1 15

2 20 *

3 30

4 25 *

5 30

6 35 *

7 40

8 30 *

9 40

10 50 *

11 60

12 50 *

13 60

14 70 *

15 75

16 65 ... and so on.

I always found that this type of ladder mileage (increase mileage for three weeks then decrease on fourth week of a four week cycle).

If you have done high mileage before, then you should perform well with this type of training. After this 16 week 'base' training, you might want to start some longer intervals (e.g. 1500's, 1200's and 800's) and do a session of 400's every couple of weeks (e.g. start at 10x400 your first time and increase it by two 400's each subsequent session).

If you get some good training partners and avoid injury, you should very easily hit the marks you mentioned.

To clarify the training schedule in my first post:

The first column represents the training week; the second represents miles run per week; the third (asterisk) represents a week that includes a mile time trial.

by the way...my past PRs:

1600: 4:53

3200: 10:28

5k: 17:20

10k: 35:54

Ok, so what I posted before should work for you as long as you are not injury prone.

Nope, I'm not injury prone.

It was the second day of track practice and it was snowing pretty good outside, so my distance coach didn't want us running outside. She had us do plyometrics with the 400/800 runners and I sprained my knee from the constant squat jumps.

I'm no stranger to high mileage. I've always run more than anyone on my team did.

In high school, I ran 12 milers every Sunday at 6:40 pace. Most of my runs were at about 6:40 pace or the equivalent effort.

Running on my own during the summer and winter, doing high mileage, 60-70mpw in the winter, 70-80mpw in the summer, I would always run faster than when we got into the season when my coaches would drop me down to 40-50mpw.

If it helps, I'm not a speed runner. I do a lot of strength work--both weights and running hills, tempos, long intervals. I try to find hills to run on for almost every run.

The reason I'm building up so slowly is because I don't need to run fast now, I have nothing important to be running for. I'm running for myself and would like to regain the aerobic base I lost during the past year before focusing on really dropping my times.

I would love to end up running sub-31 for the 10k, sub-15 for the 5k, and sub-2:30 for marathon within the next 4 years, and then closer to Olympic Trials qualifying times by the time 2012 comes along.

I should clarify...I mean closer to Olympic Trials marathon and 10k qualifying times.

I'll see you there kid... Have fun, and don't give up. It gets really difficult at times. Be pacient!