Do I need a recovery week?

[Paul]

Hey I was wondering if someone could take a look at my logs and tell me if I should take a recovery week next week, and if so, what is the most effective type of recovery week?  In a nutshell, I have been successfully adding roughly 10% per week since the first week of April, and will top off this week at about 50 miles.  The only exception was last week, where I stayed pretty close to the previous weeks total (45 & 47 mpw respectively).  My legs are pretty sore from a workout I did yesterday with my students, but aside from that I haven't had any issues.  As of right now, the way my legs feel, I will probably be fine tomorrow, with very minimal soreness, if any.

Also, if while you are there you see any improvements I can make please feel free to let me know.

Thanks for your expertise

Paul

[Sasha Pachev]

Paul:

Some thoughts. Your training looks very reasonable and well planned. Good mileage, solid gradual approach. Some changes I would make.  Instead of quarter repeats I would recommend a 3 mile time trial every two weeks. It should be done on the same course and with about the same effort. It does not need to be exactly 3 miles, but it needs to always be the same course in the same conditions (to the extent you are able to control). The effort should be not quite 100%, but close enough to where you cannot play the game of improving your time by increasing the effort.  One way to control yourself is use an HRM and try to run at a fixed heart rate. This could backfire, though, as your HRM could malfunction for a minute or two allowing you to cheat.  Or it could malfunction the entire time. Thus I prefer an honest hard but not back-breaking effort.

You will know if you should take an easy week if your time trial performances start deteriorating (assuming you have been training, of course). 

Otherwise run easy with occasional 20-30 second pickups by feel.