Big Workouts

[Paul Petersen]

One more thing to note: build up to your big workouts. Don't just start out with 16-mile killer workouts, but start from wherever you are at and gradually build your fitness to the point where you can handle a big workout. This should be intuitive, but we runners unfortunately don't often exercise common sense.  No sense in rushing fitness though; fitness cannot be hurried, it must be groomed.

[murthy]

Paul,
I could not get to this link. Looks like the page no longer exists. Can u point me to an alternate if it exists..

Thanks in advance.

This article pretty much covers everything:

http://www.therunzone.com/ntrz/?page_id=87

[Jon Allen]

The other posts in this discussion pretty much cover it.  BW are marathon-specific, long, hard workouts.  Examples given in previous posts.

[David S]

Another thing that might work - and I read this in Kevin Beck's book Run Strong in a chapter by Joe Rubio - is to make a quality day harder by running a double.  So what I tried that worked well was to get in 12 miles in the am with repeats and then go out 5 hours later at lunch and run 5-6 more miles.  So I ended up with 17-18 miles on a modified "BW" day.  I actually recovered well enough to then go out a couple days later for a medium long run.