Mel's training schedule

Coach Sam says: "Mel’s target is predominantly to complete her first marathon, though she says it would be ‘nice’ to run around the four hour mark. Using current PBs, I predict her potential as being somewhere between 4.15 and 4.26, so, erring on the side of caution to begin with, I have used the MyAsics tool, which predicts a 4.27 marathon, which equals a race pace of 10.10.

I’ve used four days a week as Mel is quite flexible about when she trains. I’ve adding extra runs in occasionally and scheduled a couple of races she already had in the diary.

Mel’s current typical mileage is around 25 miles/week, with a recent longest run of 13.1 miles (a half marathon in 2.06.26), so I’ve felt comfortable adding some extra mileage – especially to the long runs, to lessen the steepness of the increase from week to week. I’ve also changed some of the comfortable runs to steady-paced ones to add more variety and replaced some of the constant-speed ‘fast’ runs with some intervals as Mel already runs with a club on Wednesday evenings. Like all plans, this will be adapted along the way in accordance with Mel’s response and progress, as will the pace guidelines."