I respect your opinion but that's just never been the case for me, interval sessions have probably done more for my endurance than any long runs.
The your body doesn't respond in the same way as all the people that have undergone scientific testing. Intervals help you run faster and recover quicker but that comes at a cost of reduced miles, which if you have low weekly miles is the biggest hurdle to succeeding at the marathon. Furthermore, intervals are far more liekly to get your injured. That is why most beginner plans simply don;t have any, and even some advanced plans skip intervals entirely.
Its just a basic fact that interval training correlated very poorly with the chances of not hitting the wall while they do correlate strongly with injury.
Intervals are an absolute staple for shorter distances or for going fast in a marathon, but they don't help you complete one.
Maybe something to play around with, someone else showed me some McMillan plans which were similar but based around 3 main runs per week. I've got a lot of cross training on the cards, but the whole reason I'm concentrating on running is because I enjoy it, because it's easy to motivate myself for and because it doesn't require half an hour of getting ready before I can go out. I expect a 30-60 minute easy run would have a similar overall effect to some equivalent cross training, with the added bonus of strengthening stabiliser muscles used mainly for running which is what I need to build atm to prevent further injury.
I'll try that out after a few weeks in when I'm back into the swing of things.
You really want to be going in to a marathon knowing that running 15 or so miles is a piece of cake, you will get tired by 20, and then its a push. If you don't regularly run up to 13-16 or so miles then if nothing else there is going to be a big psychological shock.
Medium long runs gets you a lot of the benefits of the long run but with much less of the trauma and a faster recovery. This is why the Hanson plan calls for 16 mile max long run because under their opinion you don't get so much benefits beyond that. Personally I still think running to at least 20 miles is important but the same reasoning can be used to add medium long runs into the weekly schedule.
Pfiztinger's plans call for at least 1, typcially 2, medium long runs per week with miles up to 16 (and int he stupidly advanced schedules up to 20m).
Personally, I really realy like them. You run a decent length, a good portion of a marathon, you get used to running for 2 hours non-stop, but you get a really good recovery. I did 14.7m yesterday but felt absolutely fine going out for 9m today, yet the 16.9 I did Thursday definitely meant I didn't want to run far Friday. Its amazing that just going a few miles less makes a big difference to the comfort and recovery.
Right, I took the numbers from Higdon's Novice 1 plan so the build up should be alright as long as I listen to my body. Even stretched it out by quite a few weeks. The week layout is just what happened to be in that plan, doubtless I'll switch things about depending on how I'm feeling, how much time I have, the weather etc.
The rate of increase seems fine, if that is your current weekly millage. What you you can do is try adding an extra day, but to do so you probably want to not increase your millage while adding the extra day. Then with 5 day running you can increase at a faster rate. However, adding a day reduced your recovery days so rally IMO running more miles on fewer days is probably the best bet.
Of course. Although injury probability is pretty much a function of weekly mileage so it's difficult.
I explained it before though that weekly miles has no real correlation with injury until you hit very high miles. In fact, I gave links earlier that showed that people who run fewer weekly miles are more liekly to get injured, the reason is they experience less adaptions. If you are running 150 miles a week without any recovery weeks then yes the injury risk are high, but below about 70-80 there is no increase in risk, if anything a decrease.
What does correlate with injury is footware, increasing weekly miles too fast, speed work like intervals, running too fast in general, poor form/technique. Ultra-marathoners will regularly do 50 or even 100 miles races, far more often than marathon runner races. And they get injured far less often, because the fast marathon racers do a lot of speed work which results in injruy. Ultra guys do everything slow, which just build endruance and muscular-skeletal adaptions.
Walking breaks are not a concept that appeals to me. Thanks though
I know, they were an absolute no no for me as well. If you are going run a marathon you are going to run it right!
However, you did select Higdon's Novice plan which is has a fairly poor success rate and lot of people will hit the wall and do a walk of death to the finish, or simply DNF. A run-walk pattern will prevent either scenario, and walking before you are forced to walk will save a lot of time and make things more enjoyable.
Higdon novice plans are very borderline and realy designed for the couch to 5K crowd as a bare minimum to give them some chance of getting over the finish. the 20mile long runs should be enough to achieve that, or at least scare the person into training hard.
People who do the move plans are looking for like a 4:30 finish time or just crossing the line in any shape or form.At these times walking si really not a time cost. Higdon's intermediate plans should help get you through the 4 hour barrier.
Lastly, you have lots of time to try different things and see how it helps. At a medium long run and see how you like it.Drop intervals in place of a 2nd MLR and see if you feel better or worse. Above all else listen to your body, not a training schedule or anyone online!
