hmm seems smart. I'm excited to see how it goes for you!

Schedule change: Decided to run a hill phase first, then do the stamina phase 2nd. In the speed and tapering phase, in place of the AC 200/200 workout I plan on running a lydiard type of hill workout. That includes this: Warmup a mile, 1 set would include: Up to .2 mile uphill plyometrics as far as I can go then skip up. A 200/200/200 jog/sprint/jog at the top. A fast stride down the same hill. Then a final 200/200/200 jog sprint jog at the bottom. Then repeat each set 2 to 4 times. Then cool down until the total workout is 8 miles.

15 miler today. Felt better during the last 3 miles then I did for most of the run. My pace picked up pretty dramaticly on the last 3 but my HR didn't increase that much, hmmmmm. Overall the run was fairly slow for the avg hr though. I am really starting to see how diet makes a major impact on Low Heart Rate training. Last night while watching a UFC pay per view I ate about a dozen wings and a big plate of fries at about 11 pm. This morning it was apparent that I was still digesting that food, by the heart burn I was feeling during the run. It wasn't until near the end that I started feeling pretty good. I did have a good decoupling % of about 2% for the entire run. If I am feeling strong at the end of this week of 54 miles. I'll start my hill phase.

Week 1 of hill phase completed. First hill workout was a success. THe hill I run is on about an 8th of a mile hill. After about a mile warmup I did 8 repetitions of a hard run up, and easy jog at the top to recover, then a hard run down and another recovery jog at the bottom. Using a pace calculator from Jack Daniels Running Formula, my predicted pace for the fast secions would have averaged about a minute each rep. Right on the first rep, I ran very smooth and was surprised to see a 45 sec. first uphill rep. I slowed down some, since it was the first hill workout. I still avged about 45 seconds per fast secion when averaging uphills and downhills. Pretty good for the lack of speed training I've had for the past 4 months. The rest of the week was lower mileage of easy runs, including a 9 miler at faster aerobic effort. For next week I am back up to 50 miles. The long run will be 15. This weeks hill workout will be the same but with 10 reps. Fridays AeT run will be 12 miles and there will be an am run of 4 easy miles the day of the hill workout.

Knee is feeling better today, but I still notice a slight twinge when walking down stairs. I think I may try and do a test run this evening. I'll probably start with just a mile in the neighborhood. If it goes well I'll extend the run up to 5 miles at recovery pace. If this goes well, tomorrow I'll try to get my hill workout in. Since this is the primary workout for this phase of training I really want to avoid missing this workout, otherwise I may have to extend this phase to 5 weeks instead of 4. If I do the hill workout, I plan to modify it so that the only hard running I'll be doing will be uphill and I'll use the downhill sections as very careful recovery jogs or even walks if the knee starts bothering me.

Finished last week off at about only 30 miles. I was able to get in a 5+ miler on Saturday w/o any issues. The three days off is what I needed for the knee. This week my hill workout will only have hard uphills and slow downhills. Just to keep the knees safe. Next week I may start to do some fast downhill running but just not as much. Perhaps slowly build it up. Goal this week is 50 miles starting with a long Aet run which I did yesterday. It felt good to go a little faster. Tomorrow will be a double with a hill workout. Then a few easy days. Finishing with a 5k race Saturday. I updated my schedule so that the hills phase goes for 1 more week since I missed last weeks hill session. Also next week instead of hills will be a 200/200 reps session.

Tom, I'm impressed with where you are now compared to where you were not too long ago. Well done! Be careful with that knee, especially with the hill work you are doing. Good luck with the 5k this weekend.

Thank you for the encouragement Bob! I think the knee thing was actually a blessing. When I did the hill workout last week, instead of running hard up, then hard down 10 times, I just tried to run hard up 20 times. This made the workout much harder than I expected it to. On the thirteenth repetition I started to lose form and my legs were really burning, so I ended the hill session there and just finished off with a slow 3 mi to complete the scheduled mileage. My knee didn't bother me at all but I was pretty muscularly (is that a word?) sore all over my legs. Saturday's race went really well. Since I just came off a really long period of slow easy base training and only had 2 hill workouts for speed so far, I wasn't expecting anything real stellar. I was just hoping to finish on par with my last 8k race I ran at the end of last spring season. Hoping to break 24 min and not really knowing how to pace for a 5k I started out pretty hard running the first mile in 7:20. For the second mile I focused on trying to maintain speed but more relaxed and ran a 7:40. On the third mile I was still feeling pretty strong and started to push it again. On the final straight I noticed the finish clock was still well in the 22s and thought I may be able to break 23. With a hard push at the finish my official time was 22:57. On my watch it came to 22:55 cause it took me a couple of secs to get the start line. Granted that there was only 86 people in the race I thought I had a good chance of placing. When I looked at the results I noticed that the guy who one overall was in my age group. I think he finished somewhere in the 18's. As I looked further down the list the next 30 - 34 year old male was 10th overall I scanned over to the name and there I was. It was my first first place age group finish since I was in high school! I feel I have a lot of improvement still to come by this spring. When I ran this race I felt rough during the run but afterward I recovered very quickly. With out any tempo or interval training yet, I likely don't have much of an anaerobic buffer yet. It was also only about 32 degrees during the race. I still think it's possible I may be able to go sub 20 this spring the way things are going.