Question for Joe - Density of Schedule

[Jim]

Joe,

I know your week setup typically looks like this:

Mon - Easy or Recvoery
Tuesday - Easy
Wednesday - WO
Thursday - MLR
Friday - Recovery
Saturday - Workout
Sunday - Long Run

There is a lot of density in that sort of schedule and I am just curious if you have ever found it to be too dense, especially for folks working full time?

Have you ever adjusted that general framework?

 

[Joe]

Joe,

I know your week setup typically looks like this:

Mon - Easy or Recvoery
Tuesday - Easy
Wednesday - WO
Thursday - MLR
Friday - Recovery
Saturday - Workout
Sunday - Long Run

There is a lot of density in that sort of schedule and I am just curious if you have ever found it to be too dense, especially for folks working full time?

Have you ever adjusted that general framework?

Jim,

Most people are much sorer 2 days after a hard effort than they day immediately following - Marty Liquori in the 70's called it the "2 Day Lag Rule" (think it was in "Playboy's Book of Training for the Competitive Runner" he authored back when the publication was trying to be a legitimate literary source). Anyways I started doing that myself midweek with a hard workout on Tuesday followed by a harder 16 miler the day after with good results. This was when I just started a business, was getting my masters degree, just bought a house and was training for the Oly Trials - so I had very little time. I've found it works well for others that are working full time, nearly all of my athletes work full time. It's also worked well for my masters athlete who have careers and family. Of course it can be adjusted, some of my athletes split the Thursday Mid Week Longer Run into 2 runs, or do the MWLR on Tuesday instead - but most stick to this basic structure with quite a bit of success.

Joe

 

[Jim]

What about with the Saturday/Sunday turnaround? Do you ever skip the "easy" long run on Sunday and maybe add a longer warm-up and cool-down into the strength work on Saturday and just have one big effort for the weekend?

 

[Joe]

Same concept, usually a longer warmup and cooldown on Saturday's workout followed by a Sunday long run sometimes with 60 second surges added at the start of each mile the second half of the run.

Joe