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Originally Posted by BWillie
When you were running your max miles per week in training how did you schedule it out? Like what did you do each day as far as mileage, easy or speedwork run etc?
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For most of my marathons, I've used 12-week training plans from Greg McMillan, typically the ones for "4-5 days of running per week". You might recognize the name because he has a great online pace calculator that is very widely used and recommended by other popular running coaches,
https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/ I get the plans from his highly regarded books, of which I have several and would recommend. As far as I know, almost every one of his books will have a collection of plans in them, but you can also get personalized coaching from him, too.
Anyway, I run 5 days of week, so I move some of the days around in his plan (his books teach that one can do that).
Typically, Saturday is my long-run, so almost all of the weeks have at least a 14+ mile run, with the longest one being a 20-24 miler at the end of week 9. Week 3 has just a 90-minute progression run on Saturday, a "pullback" week to aid in injury prevention. Such pullback efforts every 3 or 4 weeks or so is a hallmark of a smart coach's training plan. Coach Greg's other "pullback runs" in the 12-week cycle still are at least 14 miles, but they are pullbacks from the slightly longer runs the weeks just before.
These long runs on Saturday are crucial and, fortunately, I look forward to them and love doing them, as I usually run around Lake Natoma and sometimes the Johnny Cash Trail near Folsom Prison. It's beautiful out there and hilly, so great training for Cincinnati and Kansas City.
Sundays are easy runs and/or rest. Typically about 5 miles, sometimes just 3 or 4, if I'm really beat up from Saturday. I'm always at least 4 pounds heavier on Sunday morning, which I think is because the long runs break down my body so much and then I eat and drink a lot afterward to recover. That extra "water/waste weight" comes off in a day or three. Usually run in Davis on Sundays, with a friend.
On Mondays I typically have either fartleks with 8 to 15 cycles including 1 to 2-minutes at a faster pace (which is still slow, but hey, I'm old and fat
), with an occasional 90-minute easy run used for some weeks. I sorta like fartlek runs but I also worry about them, because I'm older and worry about tripping. I fall about once or twice a year, but it turns out that usually happens on easy runs, not the speed workouts when I'm worried about tripping. The fartlek runs don't take a lot of time and are kinda easy to schedule, so I sometimes do them in Davis and sometimes in East Sacramento, always before work.
Tuesdays are almost always days off, unless travel caused me to need to rearrange a Monday or Wednesday effort.
Wednesdays are typically tempo efforts, longer runs that are higher intensity than easy runs. These are challenging efforts, but they are ones I look forward to because I feel like they really help me a lot. These are my second most favorite runs behind Saturday's. I usually do them early in the morning before work, from my office, running in East Sacramento, a nice neighborhood where I often get to run with a friend.
Thursdays are easy runs, more or less long recovery runs. I usually do those from my office before work, also.
Fridays I usually don't run but I do a little carbo-loading for Saturday. I tried a Hanson's training plan once, which has 6 days of running, but has shorter Saturday runs but more overall weekly volume (50 to 65 miles). On his plan, I did run on Fridays, but on McMillans, I don't.
Mileage is usually between 35 and 49 miles per week.
I don't start training for the KC Marathon until early July, so now I'm just doing what I feel like, but I still more or less follow the same pattern, just not as much weekly mileage, about 25 to 35.