Yesterday, as I was exhausted and intimidated by my scheduled run, I started thinking more critically about this running phase’s workouts. As a reminder, my current phase’s week looks like this:
- Monday: 30 minutes easy + 6 strides
- Tuesday: 10 minutes easy + 3 x 1 mile T-pace with 1 minute rest + 10 minutes easy
- Thursday: 10 minutes easy + 6 x 1 km T-pace with 1 minute rest + 10 minutes easy
- Saturday: 40 minutes easy
If the volume of T-pace running looks like a lot, I can confirm that it sure feels like a lot. Looking at Daniels’ explanation of threshold running, he has this recommendation:
As with L runs and M runs, I suggest a limit on how much running to accumulate at T pace in a single workout session; for T, I suggest not totaling more than 10 percent of your weekly mileage in a single workout.
A full week of the above runs put me at around 18 miles on the week, for a max of 1.8 miles of T-pace running in a workout. But Tuesday’s run calls for 3 miles of T-pace running and Thursday’s run calls for 3.7 miles of T-pace running. That's 1⅔–2 times his recommended limit!
I plan on scaling down the workouts in this training plan to keep within Daniels’ recommended limits. I’m accustomed to doing this in the past, because a lot of his plans call for higher mileage than I run, but I figured for these “fitness” plans I could follow them as written.
Adjusting the reps down to stay under that 1.8 miles limit, means one mile at T-pace on Tuesday and 2 reps of 1k at T pace on Thursday. That should bring my weekly volume down to around 13 miles, which would indicate a limit of 1.3 miles of T-paced running for a single workout. The revised workouts still fall within that range.
I think this will be a good change. My body has felt exhausted and beat up and I had started dreading the workouts, which is not good.