I was thinking this schedule for over the winter. I’m wanting to improve my mile time and 5k and race XC for my local club. I’m 29.
The idea is to repeat hard day then easy day. If you repeat this 7 times you get 7 hard sessions in a fortnight. The 7 easy days have to be super easy and I realise the 7 workouts can’t be super tough or one won’t be recovered in time for the next one. I realise this is nearly the same in most schedules but there is normally that extra easy 7th day of the week which helps the recovery.
For the 7 workouts I thought of something like 2 long runs (one longer and hilly and the other flatter and faster), 2 threshold workouts of varying rep lengths to a total of 8k + 4-5 short quick reps , a 5k pace session of 400-600m reps to a total of 5-6k, a 10k pace session of 800-1000m reps to a total of 6k + 4-5 hills or 200m reps (ala Tinman) and finally a short tempo followed by some hill sprints or a XC race.
I’m thinking the sheer variety of paces will be a really good stimulus and as the overall volume of any 1 workout isn’t too high, it’ll keep the injury risk low and enable me to recover. Also, if the odd workout is skipped it’ll create a nice 3 day recovery streak to prepare me for resuming the cycle and with so many extra workouts overall (7 a fortnight rather than the 6 of most schedules), it won’t be a huge problem to miss something. If I’m able to keep at it though it’ll be a good overall volume of work over the next three months.
What do people think. Does anyone do this?