It's hard to make sense of but I'll try. I started out 2010 with a femoral neck stress fx, frayed labrum of the hip and partial tear of the glues medius. I spent most of my time running in deep water and in PT until the end of March. I started running again and peaked at one 60 mile week in July. Then I developed horrible shin splints. I spent the next few months running very little. I biked and ran in the pool. I ran 30 miles total in the month before my first marathon in September and BQ'd with 22 min to spare. 8 weeks later I ran the NYC marathon 16 min faster. Crazy, huh?

+1

The injury part is what I am  trying  to avoid. Reason for No speed workouts. Plan to start doing 1 mile repeats-4 weeks- 800m -4 weeks - 400m-4 weeks. Bermuda Jan 16-(<4)   GA Thrill in the hills( 4:15 trail) Mar 26.  6 marathons in 6 months with a few halfs thrown in. BQ is on the Bucket List. If the knees can withstand the speed of racing I will give BQing a shot. Half marathon time 1:47:51( 10/3/10),50k 6:32:00(11/27/10) Knee decided it had enough at mile 15.

The injury part is what I am  trying  to avoid. Reason for No speed workouts. .

I read posts around here that seem to be saying speedwork causes injuries.  But, I think what the posters probably mean is that jumping into speedwork too quickly causes injuries.  With that in mind... is there a reason you're starting out with mile repeats?  I would think you'd want to reverse that and start out with the shorter distance repetitions and work your way up.  But, that's just my instinct which could be wrong.

 

I read posts around here that seem to be saying speedwork causes injuries.  But, I think what the posters probably mean is that jumping into speedwork too quickly causes injuries.  With that in mind... is there a reason you're starting out with mile repeats?  I would think you'd want to reverse that and start out with the shorter distance repetitions and work your way up.  But, that's just my instinct which could be wrong.

If the short intervals are significantly faster than the long ones, they may hold more injury potential.  If they are all about the same speed, I would agree to swap around and start with the short ones.

Runnerclay,

Why 4 weeks in a row of the same interval workout?  Nothing wrong with mixing it up a bit.  I try to cycle speed workouts back around every 4-5 weeks to see progress made.

 

If the short intervals are significantly faster than the long ones, they may hold more injury potential.  If they are all about the same speed, I would agree to swap around and start with the short ones.

 

Runnerclay,

 

Why 4 weeks in a row of the same interval workout?  Nothing wrong with mixing it up a bit.  I try to cycle speed workouts back around every 4-5 weeks to see progress made.

What kind of speed cycle do you recommend? 5k 22:37(7:18) on 8/14/10    13.1-1:47:51(8:14) 10/3/10. I am planing to use McMillan or Team Oregon pace calculators.

 

Well it depends a lot on your goals and background, I was speaking to the variability.  

 

You mentioned 400s to mile repeats in terms of range.  So, assuming you can handle a base of 4 miles' worth of intervals (cut down to 3 if you need to), you can swap around 16X400 on 60-75sec recovery, 8X800 on 90-120sec recovery, 4X(400-800-400) with 60-90sec between repeats and 3min between sets, 6X1200, 4Xmile on 3-4min recovery, 400-800-1200-1600-1200-800-400 on 90-120sec recovery.  Paces you can get off the calculator, it will be near 10K pace for the 1200/1600s and 5K pace for the 400/800s.

 

The goal here is just go give your legs/mind a little different taste of pace and distance.  In general I start shorter and work toward longer (up to sets of 2000-3200m intervals), but that is not when injury is in the picture and over mile repeats is probably not applicable to most.

Thanks.

I've had several years and a good handful of marathons and ultras before my first BQ, which was 2010. 

According to my log, I ran about 1,200 miles in 2010.  I cross-trained a lot (on most days I was not running) since I do a lot of triathlons too.

My BQ time was 3:08.

I want to hit 1,500 miles this year and up the cycling and swim time substantially (since I have Ironman Lake Placid to train for) but I'm hoping I'll BQ again this year at Boston (actually I'm hoping to run sub 3). 

I think it's a combo of high milage and smart milage and cross training.  No doubt a LOT of people on this site run way more miles than I do, but I think my cross training helps a lot.   I do plan/need to up my milage in the months leading up to Boston tho (ahem, now I guess!) to hit that sub 3 mark.

I ran 1076 miles (1111 if you include the 35 miles I ran in 2004) the year before my first marathon, Disney 2006. My time was 3:29, for my first BQ. Over the next three months I ran 338 more miles to finish my first Boston in 3:33.

As a new runner, I didn't know any better.