15-02-2010, 12:22 PM
Great Paul .. if you analyse those first 5 to 8 days you will see that the bulk is placed within those days.
as the runner adjusts to the program the workload in actual fact increases, athletes who I coached on a one on one basis graduated to where they were doing am runs 4 to 5 times a week (doubles) and then on the Saturday after the 2k's on Thursday they would do a hill session before the Sunday long run, with development they would get round to doing 2hrs on the Sunday
the secret to this schedule is that it can be progressively developed and if the athlete does need to miss days that they still keep the cycle of hard easy hard as it is the consistency of the cycle that leads to improvement as well as training the body when to go up & down to better plan long-term performances
and whereas the 18.5km for old marathoners is not too taxing the cycles are important, as they have been proven to work, so if there are things thrown in out of 'sync' we can easily change the pattern to get results.
I certainly hope this all helps in explaining the logic behind everything
Cheers
TheEd
as the runner adjusts to the program the workload in actual fact increases, athletes who I coached on a one on one basis graduated to where they were doing am runs 4 to 5 times a week (doubles) and then on the Saturday after the 2k's on Thursday they would do a hill session before the Sunday long run, with development they would get round to doing 2hrs on the Sunday
the secret to this schedule is that it can be progressively developed and if the athlete does need to miss days that they still keep the cycle of hard easy hard as it is the consistency of the cycle that leads to improvement as well as training the body when to go up & down to better plan long-term performances
and whereas the 18.5km for old marathoners is not too taxing the cycles are important, as they have been proven to work, so if there are things thrown in out of 'sync' we can easily change the pattern to get results.
I certainly hope this all helps in explaining the logic behind everything
Cheers
TheEd