Quote:
Originally Posted by HerRealName
Great job. Those interval sessions are downright scary looking. The other training runs all look very manageable. I'm due to start on Jan 6, thanks for being the trailblazer on this one.
I still haven't read the book but my daughter's basketball season is winding down so I should be able to get to it soon. Does it say anything about whether it is acceptable to run faster than the prescribed times? That certainly won't be an issue on the speed work but I lack patience on long runs... and i don't see that improving as the temp keeps dropping.
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Interesting that you mention that today, actually. They don't speak to it directly other than to say something along the lines of "you may be tempted to run faster. You need to make sure you can recover enough to complete all three runs in a given week." I take that to mean "if you find that you can recover and do all the runs faster, go for it!"
I say that it's "interesting" because I've been thinking about doing just that and was re-reading some of the book with an eye toward that just last night. Specifically, the book includes training plans for Boston Qualifying at the specific age/gender-based times. The BQ plans are identical in structure to the one I'm using, just faster. With the Tempo and Long Runs not looking as challenging to me, I'm thinking about ratcheting those up to the speeds of the 3:25 plan. The plan for me based on my HM race in October has me doing 1M easy, 5M@8:05, 1M easy for my Tempo run tomorrow, then 15@@8:50 for the long run this weekend. The 3:25 plan has the Tempo at 7:49 and the Long at 8:34. I'm pretty sure I can pull both of those off on Thursday and Saturday, so I'm leaning heavily toward doing just that. The prescribed plan for me is very close to their 3:35 plan, so basically I'm looking at doing the 3:35 plan on Tuesdays for the intervals, and then the 3:25 plan on Thursdays and Saturdays until I'm ready to approach the 3:25 speeds on Tuesdays as well.
The book *does* state that if you can do all three runs in a given week and don't feel challenged, it's time to speed up. They don't have a 3:20 plan, but right now some of the 3:15 speeds look close to doable. I suspect that before I'm done with this, I'll "create" and use a "3:20 plan" by just splitting the difference between the times at 3:15 and 3:25.