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Minutes per mile please Tom!!! As it was you first time over 10 miles absolutely you should feel tired towards the end. Good work.

Alehouse - didn’t think teachers were that well paid? The Hotel Bristol sounds nice 

TOM - good to see you back, shame about VLM, but excellent work on the strong 10k, good recoveries powers as well. I would think that 10k pb will take some damage one you get some specific work in the legs.


Tom K - good work on the 10 miler. You shouldn't be getting lactic build up at conversational pace, what pace band were you running at?

Simon - Advanced Marathoning is the P&D book most people are referring to not Road Racing for Serious Runners.
The second edition has a 12 week and 18 week schedules for up to 55 miles per week, 55-70 miles, 70-85 miles and more than 85 miles.

The 18 week 55 - 70 miles per week schedules have the following:

6 x Lactate threshold runs (between 15k and HM pace) starting at 4 mile and up to 7 miles
4 x MP runs starting with 16m w/ 8m@MP up to 18m w/ 14m @ MP
6 x VO2 Max sessions from 6 x 800m@5k  to  3 x 1600m@5k
3 x tune up races 2 between 8k and 15k and one in taper between 8k and 10k
Strides most weeks, between 6-10 x 100m usually as part of a 6 - 8m run. Loads of Medium long runs (11m - 16m) sometimes 2 in a week.
4 long runs of 20+ miles, 6 x  17m - 18m long runs (including some MP runs listed above)

My criticism of P&D is there should be more longer runs of 20 mile and more, there is only one 22 miler, I would like two or three runs of over 22 miles.
I would also drop a couple of Vo2 max sessions and add in a couple more MP tempos, maybe as part of some of the existing MLR’s.
Overall I think they are good schedules that get the runners doing decent mileage that is well balanced with a good mix of quality. My thinking is P&D is a good place to start from but would probably end up adjusting as I went along. Though I agree Daniels’ Marathon schedules also look good, with some better LT/tempo sessions than the P&D sessions.

Thanks Duck, I am putting together a bit of a schedule based on some of the suggestions you and Simon made. I will post up when I am clear on what I plan on doing.
Enjoy Paris, if you do the place justice you should come back about 8 pounds heavier 

4.7 miles @ 7:18/m for me tonight, with a 45 minute Pilates class sandwiched in the middle. I just ran to feel and that pace came out, it will drop once I start to add in more miles. Still some mild aching from my left hip flexor but ok to run on, it was fine during the Pilates class.

Mr V – they get easier quite quickly. I jumped up from 17 to 20 miles and found it tough, but after a 20 miler, the 16, 17 and 18 milers felt much much much more comfortable. Probably a mental thing for me, but running a 20 miler was like flicking an endurance switch, anything after that felt much more manegable.
Building up gradually like you are describing sounds like a much more sensible way of doing it though. Once you have a 20 miler under your belt it might be an idea to try a long run with some faster running in it. Maybe a 16 miler with the last 5 or 6 miles at MPish. Again, just to get a feel for adding quality to a long run so that when you do it for real in the Marathon campaign its not such a big shock.  

I like a fartlek from time to time, especially in the week leading up to a big race where I tend to use them as an extended stride session with a couple or three extended efforts of say 0.5m at target pace in amongst the strides. This helps with familiarity of pacing and it serves to open the lungs up and get the HR up a bit without taking too much out.   
On the injury comeback trail I may also use fartleks as I wont have any recent race data, so I wont be sure what threshold pace is etc, so running a longer fartlek to feel is a good way to get some quality in.  

Good mileage Mr V. How did the 18 miler feel over the last few miles? I found it tough the first couple of times I went up to that kind of distance.