September 2014

[marathondan]

20 miles a week is great target, if you can keep that up year round it's 1000 miles a year which I think is very much the best that the likes of us can manage. For me its more like 500 per year. Don't forget you should be replacing your shoes every 500 miles (if they're cushioned).

My philosophy on stretching was always that so long as I was remaining injury-free, they were an unnecessary luxury. Now I am starting to get injured more often, I'm doing a few minutes at the end of each run - just the most obvious running muscles. I don't think stretches are going to help your running performance - just maybe improve your recovery and injury-avoidance. One can spend too much time on these things.

BTW, I think that just running hills puts you at a great advantage over us flatlanders. Running uphill at normal pace is like running sprints on the flat. So your training already has a lot going for it. But yes, replacing one of your short runs with a hill rep session (say 5 mins warmup, then 2 mins uphill sprint and jog down, repeat ad nauseam) would increase your pace even more.

Have you thought about going along to a parkrun to test your pace over a shorter distance? Just hammer out the 5K as fast as you can, no strategy needed.