So you have been running for a while and now you want to build up and run ten mile races maybe a half marathon. What we do when we have our half marathon classes we’ll have people start a minimum of about five miles to six miles for their long run. As long as people are able to do that we feel you are ready to start building up for that ten mile or half marathon class. Every week we will have a speed workout, usually on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and then every weekend we will have a long run. A speed workout is when we breakdown on smaller distances anywhere between 200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters which is about half mile up to a mile. So we will do repeats at quicker speed than what you may expect to do for your long run. And again we will do that every Tuesday and our long runs every Saturday. In between those two days we will have homework. We’ll either have that posted on our blog for the classes or we will do emails. And in between those classes we will have scheduled runs or distances that you’ll do whether time or distance.

So maybe if were doing a workout of half mile repeats and we are doing a long run on the weekend of anywhere between seven, eight, nine, ten miles or more. For the runs during the week three, four, five, six miles and then of course they will be a rest day, maybe one or two rest days in between that time as well. So when we are doing our weekly program and we have our long run on the weekends my general rule of thumb is to have your long run be no more than 50 percent of your total weekly mileage. so say you are running 20 miles altogether for the full week. So that long run on the weekend would be no more than ten miles. And then scattered throughout the week you had have another ten miles across that seven day period.

And so when we are going again by week and we are increasing our mileage, each successive week we are not increasing more than ten percent and every long run on the weekends we are not adding more than one mile at a time. So say for week three we are already at six or seven miles. For week four we might be at seven or eight. As the program goes on ten, 11, 12 weeks for the last couple of weeks before the race we all actually taper. What I mean by taper is that we will reduce the Speed. We will reduce the distance a little bit to let your bodies recover so that you’re ready for race day.