Need advice to achieve 3:15

Hi everyone

New subscriber to site and magazine. First post. So apologies if I'm not fully etiquetted up here.

I'm a 43 yr old ex rugby player who began running seriously last year. Ran Shakespeare marathon in 3:51 and Amsterdam in October in 3:32. I'm 15stone and 6'2" with a 'big engine'. I'd like to see if I can get towards 3:15 at FLM 2006. I've run so far on purely a milage regime and have joined a running club running on a Wednesday night with a fast group (for me) - so I feel I'm improving on the last year. My question? To crack 3:15 will I need to do all that fartlek, VO2 threshold, running with gels stuff? Or will I just be able to run faster in training and get better?

Also, a slow long run of say 10 miles now doesn't seem as beneficial as it did a year ago when my body needed training - is this kind of training still doing me good?

Thanks for any advice and good luck with your training.

Jevon

you probably will need all that fartlek etc. i did 3.20 at rotterdam last year, which was bang on target, and i attribute that to the many track pace sessions that i had done in the previous 16 weeks, plus long, long fartleks with friends on Thursdays and shorter hill or speed work on Tuesdays. plus the obligatory long run on Sundays. all i can say is that the faster work worked and i don't think i'd have got anywhere near my posted time on long steady runs.

good luck, and enjoy yourself

Kind of what I was thinking, Frameboy. Thanks for that.
J.