Discussion: It aligns. Even if you did...

It aligns. Even if you did speedwork every day you'd be ok. 4 miles wu/cd @ 10 plus 3R between intervals = about an hour of easy running. 8 x 400 @ 1:30 = 12 min. Voila! 20%.

JD 3rd ed does suggest some percent of total miles that should be hard interval work, can't recall the exact cutoff.

I only survived 3 weeks of Phase 3 before I burned out. Phase 2 feels about right. for now. so I think I will build some rest weeks (E runs only) into Phase 3 when I get there. again.

@rudy - setting aside the whole issue of doing back-to-back days of HIT with the same muscle groups, I'm not sure it counts that way. I'll have to read the book. Throw in some M or T pace runs and the % changes quickly, take a 1E,3M,1E,3M,1E run for example. The real key, apparently is keeping your E run's at an E pace. According to Fitzgerald, most non-elite runners do not. But then, he wants to sell books....

@billh - so you worked through phase 1 & 2, and then burned out on 3? I've never run his phases, so it will be interesting to see what they look like. I've got 6 months until the 50, so should have plenty of time.

JD, 3rd ed, p. 60, 'running hard' "My suggestion for how much I or H running to do in a single session is to make the maximum the lesser of 10k or 8 percent of your weekly mileage". He calls M and T pace 'moderate' so it doesn't seem to be part of his equation. On p. 63, 4th paragraph, he gives amount of R running 'lesser of 5 miles and 5 percent of weekly mileage'. So it would seem that if you put 8 and 5 together you would get 13% spent at I and R pace.

So its pretty carefully defined. Be interesting to know if Fitzgerald how calculates things.. Just speaking for myself here, it would be really really hard for me to exceed JD's limits, not just because I am roughly following his pre-defined training schedule for 45mpw right now, but because my body is telling me its at its limit a lot of the time. Bottom line, use common sense!

I don't think it has to be as low as 20%, though I don't think that's wrong, either. When I'm in base, it's probably that low. When I'm doing a cycle, it's more (oops, wrong tense: when I used to do cycles, it was more). My mileage during phase 2 & 3 of marathon prep used to be 90-110. As Bill points out, you throw in two quality runs, both covering 15-20 and that's well over 20%, even if you only count the miles when you're on the gas (which is bogus; a session is either quality or it ain't). What I think both authors (and most others) are stressing is that, whatever the percentage you devote to "easy", make it really easy. Not Tempo or Marathon pace. Not even pleasantly firm. Easy.

Easy...but not slow. For an ultra runner running at a high level for many years, 100 mpw, easy is just that. For someone who has way less mileage, not in top form or with a different physiology or mindset or goals, easy may not be all that easy. That doesn't mean they should slow down to a virtual walk or that their form should collapse into a shuffle, or that running easy won't be strenuous. I was encouraged to run my easy runs faster, and found that I actually feel better and more energetic doing that. There are many variables involved.

Fitzgerald/Seiler would disagree with you Rudy. In the sample that I read, they're all about heart rate. For a beginner, an E run might be a combination of walk/slow jog. For an elite, an E run will be faster. Mindset and goals are not related to the pace for E.

I'll try to dig up the studies they reference. The claim is that the 80/20's improved and performed much better than athletes who had a higher ratio of mid and high intensity workouts, even 70/30.

It's not clear that there are that many variables. With workouts, you accumulate stress. The higher the intensity, the faster stress accumulates. As you improve your fitness, your body recovers more quickly so you can tolerate longer workouts. There are definitely variations in how people handle stress levels, and that's probably where the variables are: diet, sleep, genetics, form, etc. There is a very high correlation between high stress levels and injury.

"Easy" is not easy to define, haha!

Oh yeah..the variables are people. Your recent speedwork demonstrates that. Very few people can come off of 6 months of running very little and start banging out great speedwork sessions like that. Probably only orienteers.

The standard rule of thumb is that easy should be 60-90 seconds / mile slower than marathon pace. I think that works well for folks comfortably under 3 hours, but even right at the 3-hour mark, I back off more than that. My easy runs are around 8:30-8:45, which is nearly 2 minutes off M-pace. Then again, I will quickly admit that I've always been a high-mileage trainer. While I've never gone to the trouble of mapping my workouts by Daniel's stress level, the impression I get is that I'm on the low end of his stress recommendations and high end of his volume recommendations, but not an outlier on either.

To keep my hr at 120 on level ground (my estimate of E hr) I have to go about 2 min off M.