Marathon Question: 9 day 'week' better than 7 day week?

Absolutely no reason to stick to a 7 day week unless your non-running life dictates you need to.

If you can handle your longest workout on a random Tuesday, more power to you.

The nine-day cycle is pretty common, and for exactly the reason you cite. For older or injury-prone runners, it makes a lot of sense to have two recovery days after hard-effort days. There are a few of us on the 50+ training and racing thread scheduling the nine-day cycle.

Earlier this year, I experimented with a variation with just one recovery day after harder efforts. It looked like this:

Long run

Recovery

Recovery

Lactate threshold workout

Recovery

Secondary long run

Recovery

VO2max repeats

Recovery

Long run was 12 to 20 miles, at somewhat slower than marathon pace. Secondary long run was 12 to 14 miles at closer to marathon pace.

But I gave myself the option of just going easy for the long runs if necessary.

LT workouts were long repeats with short rest, or continuous tempo runs. VO2max repeats were 6 x 800m, 3 x 1600m , or 3-minute hill repeats.

I was targeting a half marathon, but with the VO2max work I felt just about race-ready for shorter stuff, too. In fact, I set an "age-graded" 5K PR during that training cycle. And ran my goal time for the half marathon.

My current goal is a marathon, so the cycle is: Long run, easy, easy, Secondary long run, easy, easy, Lactate threshold, easy, easy. Some VO2max repeats later in the macrocycle (based roughly on Pfitzinger Advanced Marathoning plan).

Hey one of those is actually my threads! That i've totally forgotten about. I asked about a 7 day vs 9 day cycle for running over 100 mpw, and someone responded with a link to Hanson's "Elite" marathon plans. I actually ended up buying the 16 weeks 100+ mpw plan.

It is pretty much structured as

Sunday - Long

Monday - Easy double

Tuesday - Speed

Wednesday - Easy Single

Thursday - Tempo

Friday - Easy Double

Saturday - Easy Single

I'm on week 4 of the plan right now, with a goal marathon in the beginning of October. Right now I'm aiming for 2:25. In my debut marathon I was training for sub 2:30, but went out a little hot and gotten worn down by a hilly first half and ended up running 2:35. I think had I not pushed the opening miles of that race I could have been closer to 2:30. But for that cycle I came into it at the beginning of the year pretty out of shape, and i only did a long tempo workout on Wednesday, and a Long run on Sunday (usually with a workout built into the long run). I think that is closer to what Daniel's outlines for his 2Q plan. I averaged 75-80 for the major portion of that cycle, but had a lot of doubles during the week.

I definitely feel like I've stepped my training up a bit going to the Hanson's approach, but I'll see how it works out. I'm a little more worried about hitting the workouts and not getting burnt out on this plan. I've bumped my mileage to 100-110 a week, with 2 shorter doubles, so more volume in my easy runs then the last cycle.

I think going to a 9 day cycle would probably be beneficial to give myself more rest, and maybe help my legs not feel as heavy as they do at this point in my current cycle. Hanson's recommends in that plan moving the Thursday workout to Friday if needed, which I've done every week so far. However that usually leads to me running an easier long run. I haven't done any long runs during this cycle that have been as fast as the ones I was doing in the last cycle. Most of them are kept at an easy 7:00 pace. So maybe you will have stronger long runs going to a 9 day cycle. That's one thing I'm kind of concerned about, but later on in the plan it starts to build in MP work during the long run.

Good luck, it's hard to find the right training. I'm constantly second guessing it, but hoping high volume will help me this time around.