I'm the same, my form gives out before my legs do. Lifting helps me a lot.

Actually I recommend the "BarryP Plan" (note: I've never actually called it that, but that seems to be its name), and then making modifications in the following way.

My plan begins with a point based on A) fitness, B) race distance (time to completion), and C) ow far out you are from that race distance.

From there, you make two key modifications.

1) Remove the easiest workouts and replace them with days that you don't run.

2) Make the other workouts progressively harder until you've reached a point in your training where you are pushing yourself enough to improve, but not so much that you can't repeat the workouts on a weekly basis.

To do this, take easy days and turn them into tempo runs first. Then take tempo runs and turn them into longer/harder tempo runs. Then take longer harder tempo runs and turn them into interval sessions. Finally, take interval sessions and fur them into harder interval sessions.


To give examples of two extremes, if training for, say, a stand alone 5K, you'd likely want three interval sessions a week…..or maybe two interval sessions and a tempo run. If training for a marathon, you might want one long run (would have to violate your 6 mile cap) and two tempo runs.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

You commute by bike? Unless you have more than 20k one way that would hardly be a workout. Commute by foot instead and you can get a lot of run time "for free". Since I got kids almost all my run training has been commute, it makes the times you can get to a track or on a long nice run in the forest very special.

Thanks Barry, was hoping you'd chime in. Think I've kind of hit upon your suggestion by default - even running 3 times a week off a fairly low running base I've found that right now I can only handle one session of hard running. So at the moment I'm doing 2 relatively easy runs (though a bit harder than I did my easy runs when running 5-6 days/week), and the 3rd session is either tempo or long intervals. Planning to get one of the easier runs up to being a tempo run, and make the other run shorter intervals.

18 miles each way, with some good rolling hills and plenty of fast sections with no lights and lots of other bike commuters to race, and I'm nearly always running late so in a rush! Unless I make a real effort to leave 5 minutes earlier and take it easy it normally ends up being a pretty tough workout. I've actually had some of my best bike times (in distances up to 100 miles and beyond) off almost no other bike training than commuting 4 days/week.