I am new to posting here and, on reflection, decided that I didn't like my initial title of the thread. So, I'm reposting under a slightly different title. Hope that's not a breach of letsrun etiquette.
Full disclosure: I'm a 40-year-old hobbyjogger with two small kids and a full time, busy job as a lawyer. So, I know my limitations! But still looking for the advice of the experienced users of this site.
I have improved my marathon time from 3:39 to 3:13 by increasing my mileage to 70 to 80 miles per week. My goal is to bring my marathon time as close down to 3:00 as possible and also to keep improving my 56km time. (I live in South Africa and we have a beautiful 56km road race called Two Oceans, which I hope to run in 4:25 in 2019.)
I tend to do one long run per week on a Saturday of between 22 to 28 miles (usual distance is around 25 miles and I only do 28 miles infrequently). I then take Sunday off and the rest of my weekly mileage is made up of singles of 10 to 12 miles on Monday to Friday. I am taken by the notion of base building and used to be quite injury prone, so I tend to run most of my miles at a moderate to easy pace (8 minute miles or even slower) with roughly one faster workout per week. I like to build mileage over three weeks and than cut in the fourth week. So, a usual progression would be 70, 75, 80, 60 and so on.
During my increase in mileage I have also transitioned to a forefoot strike. I have not suffered any injury during the increase in mileage, but I have a chronically tight and sore right glute medius, tight and sore right psoas and tight hamstrings. I was therefore wondering whether it would make sense to keep the mileage roughly (maybe a slight increase) the same but switch to doubles most days (ie, 6 or 7 miles twice a day instead of 10 to 12 once a day) in the hope of keeping fresher and recovering quicker. I would, unless advised otherwise, continue with the long run.
I am coming to the end of a short total break from running. I now plan to begin training for Two Oceans (35 miles) in April and possibly Comrades (54 miles) in June and would like to optimize my training.
I realize this topic has been covered frequently on this site. But I don't think the discussion has been tailored quite to a situation like mine. Any advice would be immensely welcome!