If you already have a base and then begin doing a training plan- (Read 1070 times)

I'm going to break off from some of the suggestions here and offer an alternative: Yes, you might want to cut back on your mileage. Basically, if you have been training at a certain level, are regularly tired, and have 16 or 20 or however weeks to go before your goal race, and you haven't taken a few weeks off at all for a year or two, then it might make sense to cut back and take it easy at the beginning of the program. That's a lot of "ifs" and generally speaking the best plan is to either find a training plan that is at your current fitness level or (better yet) get a completely custom training plan that is appropriate to you (either by modifying an existing one or coming up with one from scratch or hiring a coach.) However, you shouldn't dismiss out of hand cutting back early in a program, especially if you haven't given yourself a break in a long time. You wouldn't want to spend 3 months getting back to your current mileage (that would be silly) but if it takes 2 to 4 weeks to get back to your current mileage then you'd be fine.

That's because, if I'm not mistaken, Pfitzinger studied under Daniels.

That wouldn't surprise me. He cites to him in his book Advanced Marathoning.

I've never read either, to be honest. So many people talk about them, I feel I don't need to.

Honestly Scout, I found I was already doing what they both preach. Essentially they both suggest four different types of running: 1. Long run or Easy Pace 2. Threshold Pace (Tempo Runs) 3. Vo2Max Pace or ~5K pace or a little bit faster for interval work (1,200's or 3-5 minute work intervals) 4. Short anaerobic stuff like 200's and 400's. They both suggest 2-3 work quality workouts per week and the rest are easy pace runs. Daniels likes doubles, Pftizinger not so much. If you're familiar with periodization that's all you need to know. Daniels likes Marathon pace runs or portions of long runs ran at Marathon pace. I started doing that during my first running career.