No Paula Radcliffe schedule this year in the Marathon Mag. What do you think of the schedules they have printed and who is the guy who has written them?

Written by the winner of one of the first London Marathons (1983 I think) - he now organises training weeks etc, so he knows what he's talking about. Agree with your comment on the sudden jump to three hours SP; there should be a smoother transition. However I think doing long runs on the basis of time is better than by distance, as the emphasis should be on "time on your feet", not speed; certainly I think the sub 3 hour schedule is adequate in terms of longest runs; not sure about the schedules for slower runners but am sure I read somewhere that running for much over 3 hours was damaging on the system and should be avoided in training...

I am new to this but will let you have my thoughts anyway. Doing the long run on time rather than distance doesn't seem to be a good idea, slower runners may not have run enough miles that way. Also, it seems to have lots of 2 hour long runs then jumps to 3 hours for one week before tapering for the marathon. An hour increase in one week seems a lot.I have been looking at the Hal Higdon schedules which show distances rather than time and have a more sensible increase.