I’ve settled on a hyrbrid of Pfitzinger and Daniels, mostly following a Pfitzinger plan, but with some of Daniels’ specific workouts that I know mixed in when appropriate. For example, this was week 1 for me and Pfitzinger had a Lactate Thresold workout of 4 miles at LT pace. Daniels has a staple workout of 20min at E/L-20min at T-20min at E/L. So that was a good 9 mile day for me and got roughly the same amount of LT work done. So it’s a Pfitzinger plan, with some Daniels workouts.
A few things led me to settle on Pfitzinger. While I understand the purpose of the Interval work in the first 6 weeks and think for many people it has value, for me, the fact that neither of the next two 6 week blocks had any running faster than Tempo pace always left me feeling a little flat (that would mean come race day it had been 3 months since I had run faster than Tempo pace). Also, there are other shorter spring road races I want to do. Being in marathon shape makes those races easy, but has never left me feeling sharp for them.
So with Pfitzinger calling for some VO2max (or Interval) work later in the plan, that appealed to me. Additionally, Pfitzinger calls for a couple races 2 and 4 weeks out from race day and there are two local races (Norwell 4 miler and Cohasset 10k) that line up perfectly with that schedule.
When you say “how much running should be done outside” my recommendation would be “at least some, the more the better”. I’ve found no difference in my fitness between doing 100% of my running on the road or 100% of my running on the treadmill (tempo workouts are always done on the treadmill no matter the season).
But I think the road beats your legs up a little bit more. This is both good and bad, the bad is you have to pay attention to aches and pains and your recovery. The good is that Boston beats your legs up so going in with legs that have been toughened up on the road helps. I’ll always try to get my long run done outside on the weekends, sometimes every other run for the week gets done on the treadmill. I don’t mind the cold, but cold and dark sucks. So during the week, unless it’s a day I am working from home and can run mid-day my running is all done on the treadmill. On the weekends I’ll wait until the sun is out and head outside (unless there is snow or ice, no value in risking an injury running in that).