Higdon Fartleks

Hi,

Im using the Hal Higdon Novice Supreme marathon plan. this means i run 3 consecutive days mid week and a long run on saturday. at the moment im enjoying it and feel im progressing ok.

2 of the mid week runs (tues and thurs) are recovery runs and generally stay around 3miles. however, i am keen to try some fartleks on these days. yesterday i alternated 100m jog, 100 walk, 100 sprint and managed this for the 3 miles.

my question is, is this a good idea? and also, am i doing the fartleks right and if not what would you suggest? any comments or info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 Jon.

I am by no means an expert, but if you are changing a rest day into a speed session then you are completely changing the nature of the session and that is generally inadvisable. It may be that you don't need two easy running days and three total rest days a week and this will be fine, or you're storing up problems for yourself. It depends on your training history.

In terms of the actual fartlek you are doing, that looks like an odd session if you're training for the marathon, you have twice as much easy running as anything with any intensity and 100m is an inappropriate length for marathon training. If you want to do speed work I'd do tempo runs, MP runs, or longer intervals but not at sprint pace. 

thanks. much appreciated.

i shall look into tempo run's etc ... lots more research to do!perhaps i will try them on the wednesday i think

here's how the plan goes:

Mon - Rest

Tues - recovery run

wed - short-mid distance

thurs - recovery

fri - rest

Sat - long

sun - rest

i'm considering doing a small amount of strength training to iron out niggles and imbalances - all compound high rep ... no bodybuilding! looking at my plan, where would you suggest i fit that in? the rest days on mon and fri?

thanks again

thanks,

so ur saying wed and saturday? 

cheers,

jon