Cool Runnings!

I think 10 mile long run with only three days a week might be a little skewed. The cause of injuries is more the imbalance of volume than the volume itself. The extreme example is if you run 60 miles in one day once a week with no other running, your risk of injury is close to 100%, while if you do two runs a day 5 miles each 6 days a week, you will be much less prone to injury.

I would recommend going 4-6 with 2 miles at 7:15 or so pace in the middle when you feel fresh but not immediately after a hard day, and 2 miles at about 9:00 pace on an even grass surface if possible when you do not, but train 6 days a week. If you feel exceptionally bad, go only 1 mile at 10:00 pace or slower to keep the discpline up and the weight down.

So do you think it would be better to go ahead and add that 4th day in right now, rather than wait until my long run gets longer? The reason for my doing that was that I am trying to stay with the 10% rule - increase your weekly mileage no more than 10% per week, and the easiest way for me to do this was to add an extra mile to my long ru. I am trying to get in a good base before I start doing tempo and speedwork - I just pulled a 16-week training schedule from Runner's World that had a good mix of easy runs, tempo runs and speedwork, which I am going to use for my preparation for St. George. My plan is to get to 30 miles/week by the time I am supposed to start this training plan (June 19th), and then my max mileage/week would be somewhere in the low 50's. With this plan, I would end up running 5 days a week, with Sunday and Thursday being my rest days. I would end up with a long run of 20 miles 1 month before the marathon. I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

Yes, add the fourth, the fifth, and even the sixth day right now, if your schedule permits, but make the extra days extremely light.

10% rule is just a very rough rule of thumb, kind of like 220-age for your max heart rate ( according to which, I am 50 years old). There is nothing special about the 10%. I would say it is not a good idea to increase from 20 to 90 in one week. However, if you were to follow that rule literally, you would never start running if you are not already. 0 + 0*10% = 0.

There are a lot of factors involved in the training stress, not just mileage. The length of one training run contributes to the stress perhaps even more than the overall mileage. When you've run, your maximum recovery happens within a very short period of time, a little more happens shortly thereafter, and then you actually start losing fitness if you do not go out for another run soon enough. The actual times depend on how hard the earlier run was, your current level of fitness, your genetic qualities, your sleep, your diet, life stress, etc - it is very individual. What you want to achieve is what I call a positive cycle - over a period of time, let's say a week, you are always more fit than when you started.

If we are to learn from the elite runners, we will see that they train 2-3 times a day, but fairly light in most runs. I cannot think of any, in fact, that have or had a cycle of hammering themselves in one workout, and then doing nothing the next day. There is always a balance of a hard workout followed by an easy one for recovery. That is why I suggest 6 days a week with some very light.

Regarding Runner's World. I do not have a very high opinon of that magazine. I keep telling my running partner Eric that if he ran during the time he reads it he would be a better runner. Here is why. It is a highly commercial venture and it needs to make a buck. Unfortunately, in our culture, gimmicks sell a lot better than quality solitions. Improperly dressed women on the front page sell even better. So the market drives it to gimmicks and funny picture on the front page.

There is no universal training program that works for all runners. There are some basic principles, but trying to follow an N-week day-by-day plan written by somebody not familiar with your strengths and weaknesses is not very wise. You need to take a week at a time, and constantly adjust based on how you are progressing.

I do not think you will need any more speed than you currently have to run a 3:30 marathon. However, you will need some base mileage, long runs and especially long tempos eventually. Just forget the schedules, plans, etc, and go out and jog to build the base. Listen to your body, and adjust based on the feedback. You should probably be running most of your mileage at 9:00 pace. Run faster (7:00) for a little bit when bored, then back off to 9:00 when 7:00 becomes unbearable.

Wow, thanks for the comments! I will go ahead and try to add at least 1-2 days right away. Regarding the pace, I know it is going to be super hard for me to run at 9:00/mile - I don't know if I can even keep myself running that slow :) However, I will try to back off a little bit and build up the base more, and will make my additional days light workouts (1-2 miles). Maybe I can at least drop down to 8:30/mile with some faster sections in there.