If he does succeed in such a ridiculous time then i insist he goes straight to the pub and gets the first round in, my Guiness would have just about settled by the time I arrive.

Or maybe he'll drag me round and i'll overtake him with a Km to go.
Sorry Rich, couldn't resist.

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2011 Sturunner - <1:12:00 13.1 (Fulmar)
2010 Sturunner- sub 2:45 VLM (RichardSimkiss) DONE

*Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.*

If you want to email it to me I'm sure I can sort it (will PM you address).

I can program it into the GPS, but it's pretty easy really, it goes 5,4,3,2,1, and for each number I do X miles @ tempo pace, X mins @ easy pace. The on the vast majority of my sessions I just have 2mi warmup, 2mi cool down.

I've always tried to have a rest day the day before a race - it's just something I've always done and never had reason to change it.

I'll be aiming to beat 2:45 without doubt, but don't expect to be anywhere near your predictions JBB. Looking at how my half marathon time translated to marathon last year, my PB at Birmingham Half suggests I should be looking at 2:44. I would like to get this closer to 2:40, but will have to see how training goes. Last year I underestimated the difficulty of the marathon and have learnt not to set such optimistic goals!

I'll be more than happy to get you a nice cold pint of revenge.... I mean Guiness

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'

Yeah send me your e-mail address and i'll get it across to you.

Revenge is a pint best served cold.

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2011 Sturunner - <1:12:00 13.1 (Fulmar)
2010 Sturunner- sub 2:45 VLM (RichardSimkiss) DONE

*Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.*

Really interesting thread, enjoying reading all the comments and posts. Haven't had a chance to download the training plan as I'm on the Blackberry, but will look at it when I get home later.

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Sub 1:50 half and sub-4 hour marathon (Thanks, Badz)

Stu's Training Schedule:

Attached Files

StuRunner VLM 2010 Training.zip (6.1 KB, 40 views)

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'

I will think of this as a pre-post as I have only glanced at both plans.

I will look into them and hopefully offer some decent opinion at some point.
Both seem to be able to produce good results - the expected results. I would go for Stu's plan as it seems to focus more on quality than on quantity and allows for good recovery periods but that's only because I am not sure at all that I could do with Richard's plan.
Richard's seems to be very ambicious and I think that if you (Richard) can survive it you will demolish the field and finish in a very good position/time.
My fear is about overtraining.

Is Stu doing too little? Is Rich doing too much?

I will look into the plans with time.
And I will follow this thread carefully.

Stuart, would you be so kind and start you own thread too?

Having looked at Stu's plan I think it's a sensible and well balanced plan, and to be honest does make me question whether my own plan is too ambitious. Though that said - as you say fulmar, if I can avoid injury/overtraining, it should work out quite well.

It'll be interesting to see how you get on in this weekends half Stu. Am I right to assume the 20mi race will be done at, or faster than marathon pace?

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'

Interesting stuff Rich/Stu.

Rich, I will be impressed if you can stick to those Wed afternoon workouts in Jan/Feb . I've got the Daniels book as well and I can see the elite plan is very similar to yours in respect of the quality workouts. Good to see a rest and easy day following Wedgnock...I certainly needed it!!

By the way I spotted a small error on 7th March with the mileage

Stu, some weeks appear heavy on "quality sessions" with hills, intervals and a long run. Have you considered a more progressive long run e.g. increasing pace every 5 miles in place of one of the other hard sessions? I'm not an expert but people have reported this giving good improvements in endurance. My Mike Gratton schedule has intervals OR hills in a particular week, but not both. Personally I would cut back on the amount of intervals for Mara....but that's mainly because I tend to injure myself more during those efforts!

One last point, are you really planning 10 miles followed by hills on Xmas day and boxing day? That is dedication!

As usual, if there was one "best" way of training, everybody would be doing it!

Good luck!

the half this weekend is hilly, that said I still want to go sub 1.20, i did 1hr24mins26secs last year so if I can get a sub 1.20 then I'll be significantly ahead of last year.
the 20mile race has two killer hills but I want to go under marathon pace, ideally as close to 2hrs as possible.

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2011 Sturunner - <1:12:00 13.1 (Fulmar)
2010 Sturunner- sub 2:45 VLM (RichardSimkiss) DONE

*Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.*

Chris,

There maybe a few too many quality sessions in there, and no doubt the plan will change, but i find my body responds best to being pushed, intervals and hills sessions seem to have the most positive effect on my body. That said I'm training for a marathon and conequently have to "get the miles in". The problem i have with just running miles is that I become very stale and one paced and my technique suffers, I become a plodder.
I'm also a great believer in training your body to run faster than race pace, so come race day the pace seems easy(ish)

and yes i'll be doing a fair bit of running over christmas

Stu

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2011 Sturunner - <1:12:00 13.1 (Fulmar)
2010 Sturunner- sub 2:45 VLM (RichardSimkiss) DONE

*Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.*

The wed afternoon workouts are probably going to be the hardest to motivate myself for - purely becuase they'll be done after a day in the office and ran in the dark. I'm considering doing them in Leamington on the way home from work so any shorter reps can be done at the track and tempo stuff can be done under streetlight, rather than complete darkness.

The last wedgnock completely wiped me out, and as much as I'd like to do a med-long run the following day, I just don't think it's possible!

I am somewhat nervous about the quality workouts suggested by Daniels, but purely because I've never done anything like it before and they're going to be tough sessions. Still he knows more than I do, so I trust his sessions, but will happily revise them if I'm struggling to cope.

Cheers for spotting the mileage error, it was originally a 22mi, but I wanted to fit in a 24mi LSR, so it's definately supposed to be 24mi (and the typo is now corrected)

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'

If anybody wants my personal training plan then just divide Simkisses' figures by 10

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I run because I don't have to.

For anyone interested, I've updated the layout of the schedule a bit so it's a little easier to understand and digest - Sessions are more appropriately named:

Q1 Long is now either "Long Slow", "Long Mixed", or "Long Hard" and coloured accordingly

Q2 Tempo is now either labelled "Tempo" or "Intervals" and coloured accordingly

Information of what each quality ('Long', tempo & interval) session includes can be seen by hovering the mouse pointer over cells which have a little red mark in the top right hand corner.

It makes it a little easier to understand the structure of the schedule, though truth be told I just like spreadsheets

File can be found at:
http://www.runnersforum.co.uk/attach...simplified.zip

...also now in the original post

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'

Richard, it is interesting to see how you plan your runs, thanks for sharing. You are missing 3 long run sessions on Sundays for complete rest, why is this.

Each one of those rest days is following a very hard race on the Saturday - incredibly hilly and hard work - I wouldn't be capable of performing a long run the day after those races without severely risking injury/overdoing it.... the course is approx 10k and is 7mins (20%!) slower than my 10k PB.

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www.richardsimkiss.co.uk
'The minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it's possible'