I've had to switch my Tuesday run day with my Wed. rest day the last couple of weeks. Seems to have worked fine, except for this week when we had an extra day off (why was that?) Now I have had 3 days off in a row. I will run the 40 minutes tonight, and the required minutes tomorrow. Is this ok to do every now and again? I haven't had 3 days off since I started in March and it felt weird. Is there a method to the run days/rest days schedule during the week?

This is a very good question. Does anyone have some general advice on how to rearrange the running schedule to suit schedule circumstances? For example, this week I can't do the long run at Portland Fit, so I will be doing it at Vancouver on Sunday. This throws the schedule off by one day, but then I will also need to back next week's long run into Friday because I will be out of town next weekend. That makes two really long runs within the same week. Is it okay to do things like that every now and then, or like sisu says, skip three days of running every now and then?

Okay, so my "general advice" (I'll address both people's questions here) is, it's okay to do this on occassion and not worry too much about totally reorganizing your schedule to "make up" for something. However, much like all things related to the sport of running...it's very individual, you have to realize what works for YOU and no one else and you have to learn to listen to your body. If by putting two long runs in a week you're going to be too tired....or after your first one you're not feeling 100% recovered and ready to tackle that next long run...then go out but cut it short by a few minutes a mile or two....OR go our at a very easy pace and just spend the time but don't run your heart rate up there as high. As for having three rest days in a row.....sometimes it can equal improvement (especially if you don't do it often). An extra rest day now and then isn't going to kill you and if you're like most runners you're probably going at it a bit hard anyhow and an extra rest day thrown in randomly will likely help you recover just that little bit more to allow your body to improve even faster. However, then get back out there! For some people the schedule is REALLY important and if they miss a day it can mean a downhill spiral which ends up with them sitting on the couch again on Saturday mornings instead of training for a marathon! However since you said it felt "weird" then I'm assuming this isn't the case for you....that you have a nice pattern of exercise in your lifestyle now and you're not going to let that happen. So, enjoy the extra day of rest and get back out there!

I hope that helps.

AC Marion

Other than injury or a mental break, there's no reason for a 3-day break at this point in the schedule. A 2-day break is plenty.

If you need to juggle days around, I'd suggest to keep this in mind: most marathon programs, including the USA FIT schedule, are really designed with a 2-week training cycle in mind. That's because the "ideal" training cycle, physiologically speaking, would be something like 11-12 days, not 7 days -- since the world revolves around the 7-day week, though, a 11-day cycle would be thoroughly confusing, so we pad out the schedule to 14 days, then fit that into our schedule. As noted in the PFit/VFit newsletter that John just sent out, our weekend runs alternate between shorter and longer runs: now you know why!

So you actually can move things around within those 2-week cycles with some flexibility. I wouldn't stress about having your long runs on Sunday and Friday because one of them is bound to be long (11-13 miles) and one shorter (8-10 miles). Just make sure to get two rest days betwen the two and you'll be fine.

Since we have a standard training program we can't optimize for everyone's calendar. Try to avoid having two hard days in a row (though some people manage even that fine), keep the right number of rest days, and you'll be fine.