So after an inflamed Achilles caused me to drop out of an April marathon, I'm back in training. One of the great things about everything being recorded in my Strava account is I can look back at my weekly mileage and general training schedule and see if there was a likely cause of over-exertion etc that may have led to the injury. With the benefit of hindsight, it looks like I escalated my weekly long run distance too quickly after Christmas in an effort to get some 20 milers in before the race. Really poor weather (beast from the east) reduced the number of long run opportunities too so I think I tried to skip a few jumps and went from 13 to 18milers....
This time around I'm looking to run more often (previously training on 3 days/week; currently on 4/week, heading for 5/week) with the following general plan. I'm looking to run this to build general fitness and then extend the long run as I get closer to the marathon.
M: Rest
T: Easy with strides
W: Speed workout
Th: easy miles
Fr: Rest
Sat: Easy with strides
Sun: Long easy.
Current easy pace = ~8min/mile, 5k race pace = ~6m10s/mile
I commute each work day on bike too; I rarely push it on these commutes, so I treat them as recovery.
Comments/builds/critique of this plan encouraged and welcomed, cheers!
While you are increasing the number of days running I would completely cut the speed work. Once you have reached 5 days a week comfortably then
I would only do speed works outs every 2 weeks, and if you do a speed workout then strides only once. You could also do soemthign like hill repeats. When you get closer to a marathon then speedwork once a week,although not in a recovery week.
Your easy pace is probably too fast if 6:10 is your 5K time, I would be looking more like 8:40 to 9:00 a mile, at least a couple of your easy days, and start the LR run at 9:00 or slower and build to 8:00 or faster by the end.
Always important when you are building volume that you don;t add to much other stress like speed work, and increase the long runs slowly. You just have to be patient. High volumes (over 80 miles a week) and long runs over 20 miles are perfectly safe and very low risk, much lower risk than a speed workout. But going form low volume ot high volume, or 3 to 5 days, or 10 to 20 miles in a short period of time is very risky. This is compounded when you do several things together.